


We Fall Again

by FFFantasies



Series: Lyrics curling like Leaves [3]
Category: Filthy Frank Show - Fandom
Genre: Multi, basically just adding this on archive too
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-04
Updated: 2017-04-04
Packaged: 2018-09-22 01:00:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 49,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9574913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FFFantasies/pseuds/FFFantasies
Summary: No thing is eternal, even Gods. Power fades and terror holds the people only so long as you can give them something to fear. Every God falls, even Dark Ones, especially the Dark Ones. They fall the hardest and most shameful because of their; pride, arrogance, betrayal and treachery. They fall the quietest and least missed, most of the time, other times they cling to power and carve out niches for themselves.This one is somewhere between falling and fallen, forgotten and hated.





	1. Falling, Fallen for you

**Author's Note:**

> Hello friends, so since tumblr is a clusterfuck of a website whose tags are difficult to track in the proper order, I'm bringing my tagged fics over to archive. Enjoy.

[He’s heard about it, never thought it was true but what the fuck does he know anymore?](http://vocaroo.com/i/s0XwGSMbxFML)

“Todd’s an asshole, Marcella, and it’s his loss.”

He can hear her, plain as day, and he can hear her friend on the phone. Her voice is clear, crisp with a strange accent he doesn’t know, her friend is tinny and staticy over the line. She probably doesn’t hear the buzzing undertone but he does. He wonders how much she can hear, what she can’t. Can she hear her own heartbeat, steady and calm, but spiking every time her friend tells her about their now mutual ex?

Probably not. Human’s don’t hear much, they probably see less than him and they can’t even smell their own fear unless they piss themselves. At least he’s still better than them like that even if…

Even if he’s not a god, not anymore, never was exactly but no one needed to know that. He’s as mortal as something like him can get now; he bleeds and he can’t remember the last time his blood didn’t burn the ground it fell on. He’s blind, can’t see anything but darkness and it’s not the comforting darkness he’s lived in for years and years. This darkness feels wrong, off, and he stumbles through it every time he forgets to use the fucking cane he hates.

How do humans live like this?

“I can’t believe Jessica slept with him, that bitch.”

He wonders if she can smell the garbage rotting in her kitchen, or shit in the sewers, he doesn’t think so. He breathes deep and he can smell her shampoo, once he’d be able to tell all the chemical flowers apart, he’d be able to tell the type of plastic and how often she used it now he only knows that it’s soft and floral. He likes to think she uses it because she knows her upstairs neighbour is a quasi-demonic entity, former-quasi-demonic entity, who has a sensitive nose and a strange fixation with her.

She definitely doesn’t but it’s nice to think about sometimes, it’s a nice distraction, especially when he soaks through his bandages and has to change them out. The blood is always a mix of purple-black and red and if he didn’t know better, he’d think it was infected. He does know better though and knows it’s just corruption, just corruption leaking, seeping from him because the process takes time. He wouldn’t be surprised if he bled corruption for decades, if he didn’t wake up one morning old and frail and coughed corruption into his wrinkled hands.

He rolls over and winces when his ribs shift and move. Fucking shadow wraith and his fuck toy, Chin Chin should have killed them both before he got this weak. He should have killed the Fake the first time he visited, snapped the wraith’s neck and waited for the other one to get home. He could have done it with the very same knife he got stabbed with, make it ironic, then he could have set the entire apartment on fire, watched them burn straight to hell.

He should have condemned them, should never have let the Fake out of his sight- _ha_.

“She’s fake Marcella, she’s a fake bitch.”

He rolls over onto his other side. He couldn’t kill them though; he thinks it’s part of this mortality. Humans are so fucking sentimental it makes him physically sick. He thinks about them wrapped up in each other and clenches his teeth until they ache, until they threaten to crack and break because Fake belonged to **_him_**.

Fake _belongs_ to him.

He found the broken link to in a ruined realm, he made sure it didn’t die, fed it, made sure it fucking lived. So what if he used the Fake? The Fake was his, his creation, he should be able to use it however the fuck he pleases; he built the fucking weapon, he should be allowed to treat it however he wanted. In the past that’s how it had been, when he found something shinier, newer, more powerful; it’s how he lived and all he knew.

Is it wrong? He never cared, he doesn’t care; morality is a human thing and he’s mortal but he’s still not human, he refuses to be human. Even if he wears a face like theirs, even if he speaks their languages now and eats their food, sleeps, bleeds, and shits like them. He refuses to be human, they are disgusting, their emotions are disgusting, their willingness to stand firm one second and concede the next. They’re fickle and he fucking hates them all.

“He doesn’t deserve a second chance!”

Her voice pitches up, stresses strange parts of the sentence and he can hear the strain, this isn’t her normal range but she’s aggravated. He doesn’t know why he’s so obsessed with her, she’s a human like all these other cumstains but he likes her despite that, in spite of that? He isn’t sure.

The first time he heard her, he was groping along an alleyway, bleeding and cursing, snatching at the power slipping away between his fingers. She was angry that time, voice deep like he hasn’t heard it again, and she was arguing with someone. He listened to her, the dip and fall of her words, the gravel in her voice when she said ‘no, I’m living here now and I like it’. He listened to her until her voice got swallowed up by the early morning traffic.

When he fell, the only thing he cared about was Fake, if he could get Fake back then he could get his power back. He doesn’t know where he got the idea, why he thinks it would work because even the shadow of a link between realms is more powerful than him right now but he still holds out.

He knows falling isn’t fixed, it isn’t changed, reversed or stopped. He was doomed to fall, from the second he gave his eyes, from the second he took the power being offered he knew he was doomed to fall. He supposes he should be lucky he’s still got his senses, even if his head feels stuffed full of cotton; everything is muffled and he can’t push past it. He remembers being able to map out a room based on the way it sounded, he remembers being able to kill with a flick of his fingers, he remembers being powerful and mighty and merciless.

Now he’s here, using their mortal money to live in a shitty apartment, eating their wrong tasting food and listening to the only one that doesn’t disgust him. He’s aching from the wounds that refuse to heal and he’s learning how to live but he’s listening to her voice too. He’s listening to her kick her feet in the air, he’s breathing in her perfume and can almost feel the frown of her lips.

He hates humanity but he’s interested in her.  


	2. Three Times the Charm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Every story has it's beginning, middle and end. Not every story tells them all in order.

[These ruined realms were pitiful,](http://vocaroo.com/i/s1Tmc8XfLx7E) useless and disgusting but they were easy to travel through, even the weak ass creatures living here knew better than to fuck with him. He could cross half a realm without meeting anything other than carrion birds that never landed on any of the straggly trees and that was exactly how he liked it. Some of the ruined realms were even in twilight, always stuck there because the sun had fallen for them and night would never come, he liked those the best.

Right now, well, he was trying to get to the grass lands to meet with a hitman and he hated taking the toll station. The toll station always took so fucking long to get anything done he might as well just walk and he was. He didn’t know which realm this was though, it’d been left to rot for so long after all the chromosomes had been extracted and only scavengers hung around anymore. Besides, there were millions of realms just like this one, they all blurred together after a while and Chin Chin couldn’t be assed to remember them all.

He was pretty sure this one bordered the grass lands though and if it didn’t well, he’d keep walking until he got fed up enough to teleport out. For now though, the realm was near silent except for the wind blowing through the overgrown grass and stunted trees, it was getting as close to night as it probably ever got and everything looked blue tinged. Well not exactly _looked_ but it was blue tinged from the drop in temperature, or maybe it was going to rain.

He could have sent Plastic Pinocchio, probably should have, but he wanted to take care of this himself. The sacrifice was coming up and Chin Chin finally had a big enough chromosome cache to banish Francis of the Filth back to the rice fields even though it wouldn’t be a permanent solution, it would give him time to work out something better.

He almost didn’t sense it, the smell of something not animal, the sound of breathing that wasn’t harsh and fast, the taste of blood on the air. The realm was as full dark as it ever got when he realised it wasn’t as deserted as he thought, not entirely at least and if it could live here with no chromosomes…

So he altered course, the hitman would wait, and he was interested in whatever this was. He followed the smells; old sweat, old blood, new blood, fear, exhaustion, hunger, desperation, gun powder- _old_ gun power. All of it painted the picture of something pitiful in his head, something human but starving, something that could be powerful but wasting away in a good for nothing realm. He smiled as he stalked closer, grabbing at the creature’s legs with shadows, tasting the old sweat with them, finding the old blood and then the new blood.

The thing got up, stood on two shaking legs and held the gun like a piece of wood, no bullets then and no other way to defend itself. Chin Chin lingered just beyond where the…link, the link between this realm and the others stared into the darkness and breathed in deep. He knew this one was hungry, starving, and was thirsty, probably hadn’t seen another humanoid thing in years; this one looked like Francis of the Filth.

When he stepped forward the Fake Francis flinched away, then he noticed what Chin Chin had in his hand. He wasn’t sure whether he should’ve take food with him but he’s glad he did now, the dried meat was tough but the Fake was tearing strips off and swallowing them whole. Chin Chin couldn’t help but think of an animal, an animal that had been neglected far too long and was starving for more than food.

Chin Chin held out the water next and smiled when it was snatched up as fast as the food. He couldn’t see much in the darkness but he didn’t need sight to know what this Fake Francis was like. Scrawny, he could hear ribs brushing against a too large, too ripped, stained and tattered shirt, he could hear the Fake’s stomach gurgling and the sound of desperate swallowing. He should stop the Fake from eating so quickly, taking a bite then washing it down with a gulp of water but he’s still judging this one.

There wasn’t much muscle, nearly all of it was lean, and so little fat, this one was probably twenty pounds lighter than the Real Francis. He could bulk up though, there was plenty of time for this one to bulk up before the sacrifice day and Chin Chin knew the only reason this one was alive was pure spite. There was no other explanation, survival only got you so far after all, but spite and vengeance well now that was easier to work with.

He knew the Fake was looking at him, could hear eyelashes brushing gaunt cheeks every time he looked up. He knew the Fake found him handsome too, he could hear the skip in heartbeat every time the Fake glanced at him, he could feel the heat flooding the Fake’s face, could almost taste the arousal building low in the Fake’s gut. So he knew it would be easy, it will be so easy, to bring this lost link to heel, to make it follow his every single word.

“Come with me, I’ll take care of you,” he promised, sickly sweet, forcing the English words past his lips because he knew this one wouldn’t understand him, not yet. He smiled as widely as he knew how without showing off the rows and rows of teeth made for ripping and tearing. He threw his arms wide and the picture of openness and geniality, he even opened his eyes for this one, to show it what he really was.

“You’re too pretty to leave here,” he added, appealing to the Fake’s base needs, the need for affection, for acceptance by the object of his new lust.

Chin Chin knew he had the Fake when it dropped its hands, when it straightened up for the first time and looked him full in the face. God it looked like Francis of the Filth, everything down to the flecks of chromosomal light flickering in its eyes but Chin Chin didn’t move, he kept smiling, kept his arms wide. He knew he had the Fake when it grabbed his arm, held his wrist tight and ducked its head, and whispered the word that sealed their deal.

“ _Please_.”

* * *

She knows about the new neighbour even if no one else really gives a fuck. She knows he keeps weird hours because she’s up when he comes home and she hears him slamming his front door too hard. She knows he doesn’t have a real job because he doesn’t keep an actual schedule, he’s home when she leaves in the morning, he’s there when she gets back at night sometimes, other times he isn’t.

She wonders if he knows she can hear him walking around up there, not that she really minds. He’s better than her last neighbour who was always screaming and having loud sex; she was never happier than when he fucking left.

She thinks about what he must look like sometimes, tries to find a face to match the muffled voice she hears. He sounds angry most of the time she hears him though, shouting and growling at…she doesn’t actually know; she thought it was someone on the phone for a while but she isn’t so sure. Sometimes she wakes up from a dead sleep because he’s shouting but she’s nearly entirely sure no one else hears him, no one else has ever complained about him after all.

Tonight’s one of the night’s he’s angry, she can hear him stomping around but there’s no shouting and she’s laying on her bed listening to him. She thinks he must be older than her, not by much probably but still older, he probably doesn’t go to her college even though most of the people living in this building do. She wonders what he does, maybe he’s at grad school and has a paper due, maybe he’s going through a rough break up.

He shouts a word she’s pretty sure isn’t English, and something’s crashing; glass it sounds like. He shouts again, a string of words she doesn’t think are English, or Japanese, and then he’s slamming the door shut and she can’t hear him anymore. She stays in bed for a few minutes more, wondering, wondering, wondering.

She gets out and drags on a shirt before she leaves her apartment too. She wants to know who his guy is, she’s curious and Marcella was always warning her about it, said she’d end up like the cat one of these days. IG doesn’t really give a shit, the sooner the better and all that bs.

The hallway’s empty when she gets out there, well duh it’s fucking two in the morning but she knows he never takes the elevator and she didn’t hear him using the stairs so he went up? She’s glad she had a pack of cigs in her shirt pocket so at least she can say she was coming out for a smoke when they meet up. They are going to meet up, she’s gonna make fucking sure of it.

The roof’s cold, middle of the night cold and she’s already regretting just the shirt and boxers idea but fuck it, she’s already out here. She’s out here, hugging herself to keep a little warm until she adjusts and she doesn’t see him. For a second she thinks he jumped and feels something cold in the pit of her stomach then she sees the smoke, well at least her excuse is believable.

He’s crouching by the side of the roof and all she sees is his back, he doesn’t even twitch as she walks towards him but she feels like he knows she’s there. She’s shaking a cig out of the pack as she stops next to him and he finally looks up at her; she almost drops her cig.

He blinks and the little bit of light that makes its way up here reflect off his eyes, like a cat’s, and she feels like he’s looking straight at her soul even though she knows he can’t see her. Maybe she can blame all the breaking things on this wait-fuck, that’s probably ableist to think, shit. He blinks again and his eyes are normal, not glowing red at her and she wonders why they’re that colour, contacts maybe?

“Uh hey, I’m IG, your downstairs neighbour,” she introduces herself because awkward silences have always been her specialty and here she is making another one. He doesn’t say anything, doesn’t really do anything but blink slowly at her and blow smoke out of his nose which is kind of impressive.

“Isabella Gwen but IG’s good,” she continues because in for a pound and that shit, he turns away when she puts her cigarette to her lips. He rocks forward onto his toes and she worries for a second he’s going to fall because he’s right on the edge but he rocks back and blows a stream of smoke out over the edge instead.

“I heard something break, you okay?” she asks casually, taking as deep a drag as she can and holding it because god yes. Her dad hates her smoking but he doesn’t say anything, not after the whole big fight with her mother and the general not seeing each other more than a few days each month. She breathes out when it starts to burn and wonder what her strange neighbour thinks of her, can he smell the perfume she spritzes on all of her clothes or hear the sound of her scuffing her shoes?

There’s not enough light up there to make out the colour of his hair but it’s dark, she thinks black, probably black because when he turns to her again he’s definitely Asian. If she didn’t know his eyes were fucking red, she’d guess they were brown but they’re glinting at her again and definitely not brown. He’s got a nose that looks like it got broken a few times and his hair flops in his face every so often but he doesn’t push it away, he probably doesn’t have to. She decides he’s handsome, even though she can’t see him very well, she just has a gut feeling about it so he must be getting over a break up.

“It’s cool if you don’t wanna talk to me, just give me a hint, okay?” she tells him, taking another pull and holding it again. She wonders why they broke up, was it him, was it them? She’s probably too fucking nosey but she wants to know, for some reason, he’s different than most of the people she knows and that’s fucking saying something. Of course he could also have rampant anger issues and all the breaking shit was too much for the relationship.

“I was…angry, I broke a mirror,” he finally says and she jumps when he does because his voice is much smoother than she expected it would be, she’s only ever heard him shouting but she didn’t think he could sound this calm. She kind of wants to listen to him speak, or read a book, yeah she’d love an audio book by this guy. Is that weird? It’s probably hella fucking weird, shit, she probably shouldn’t tell him any of that then.

“…sorry for waking you up,” he apologises and he’s looking at her again but slightly to the left, over her shoulder and it should probably be unnerving but it isn’t. She doesn’t know why, maybe it’s because his voice is so soft and calming or it’s because they’re both standing on the edge of a ten storey building. She doesn’t know why she’s so interested in this guy, why she wants to know as much as she can about who he is, where he came front, what he’s so angry about sometimes.

“Nah it’s fine, we all got shit right? Usually I call up friends and bitch to them about it instead of breaking shit, it’s safer and costs less,” she adds because well she’s kind of leading up to him calling her to rant sometime. Maybe she can even invite him over and he can do the whole pace up and down thing while she listens, she thinks it might be nice.

“Sounds therapeutic,” he comments, pulling the cigarette from his lips but he’s definitely smiling and she finds herself grinning back at him. He rocks onto his toes again and back and strands up, he’s taller than her, but not by anything reasonable. He’s probably taller than her by a stupid centimetre or two and that’s just bullshit because she could understand an inch but not this. This is just dumb.

“You should try it sometime, IG’s Therapy Services, just call ahead to make an appointment,” she jokes and it’s not that funny but they both start laughing. They’re laughing so hard that she drops her cig and he grabs her arm to stay upright and fuck his laugh is nice too. His voice is all high pitched right now and he’s laughing like it’s the funniest thing he’s ever heard in his life and she’s pretty sure he’s crying from how hard he’s laughing.

His hand on is cold on her arm though, almost frozen and she thinks that’s a little strange but he’s snorting now and she gets distracted. They’re hiccupping and snorting and gasping for air and he’s smiling at her and she’s grinning at him and she doesn’t know why this feels…off. Then he laughs again and she forgets about that too.

“I’ll make my appointment under Dick,” he promises and he’s snickering and she’s leading him back across the roof and down the stairs. She doesn’t think about how he phrased it, how he didn’t say ‘my name is Dick’ or ‘call me Dick’. She doesn’t wonder why he feels off even though he feels right at the same time. She doesn’t even think about why he’s so fucking cold because she finally has a name and face to the voice and she’s happier than she’s been a while.

* * *

I knew it would take something big, something personal, but I never thought about sacrifices and eyes. I knew the heart was traditional, I knew the tongue was modern, I knew they could charm the soul from a saint and lead a martyr to sin but I never thought about the eyes. Maybe that was my mistake, leaving the offer so open, “take anything you want, give me power”. Maybe it was them all along and I just fell for their pretty, pearlescent promises.

I feel the blood running down my face, hot and wet, feels like tears and I know those are mixing with the blood. My mouth is open, I can’t remember how to close it, and then there’s metallic blood on my tongue, and then there’s salty tears on my tongue and I remember how to snap my jaw shut.

The pain is a throb, the pain is lancing, the pain is overwhelming. I can hear them, saying things, promising things; power, fear, loyalty, demise, ruin, falling. I know I’ll fall, someday, sometime, because these deals only get you so far but I’ll snuff out every fucking light if I have to. I’ll leave the omniverse dark when I fall, nothing will be left after I’m gone. I don’t know how I’ll do it but I do know I will.

I feel something drop in my hand and I almost vomit all over myself, the heart. Hearts were traditional; I had to bring them one even if it wasn’t mine and I’d had to make it mean something.

“Eat.”

I feel the word more than I hear it and I-I-I…

The meat is tender and juicy, fatty and bloody in my mouth. I don’t try to taste it because I know what this is, I fucking know what this is but-but-but.

I’m stuffing it all in my mouth, chewing hard and swallowing as much as I can. I’m licking my fingers for every last drop and they’re throwing something else at me. Tongues were modern.

I don’t stop when my jaw aches, I don’t stop when my own too sharp and too many teeth slice open my tongue. This shouldn’t taste as good as it does but it does, oh it does. Something else is given to me and I don’t stop to find out what it is, I eat, I tear out chunks with my too many and too sharp teeth, I barely chew and I’m swallowing.

Blood is thick in my mouth, life’s blood, old blood, my blood and it smells sweet. They’re speaking again but I don’t understand them, they’re touching my face and I don’t stop eating to push their hands away. I feel the pain fade, I feel everything, I hear it, I smell it.

“Speak.”

I crunch through something, a bone, and I suck the marrow from it.

“Speak.”

I’m licking my fingers again, I want everything, I don’t want to miss anything and my tongue is different too. When I open my mouth, it’s wider, larger, I feel like I could swallow anything whole, choke it down.

“Sp-”

I cut them off with a grunt, I push myself to my feet, I stand up and I’m shaking but it’s not from pain or weakness. I’m shaking because the power is incredible, it’s beautiful, it’s worth everything I have to give up to keep.

“Ore wa Chin Chin ga daisuki.”


	3. Remind me to______

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ...remember who you were and how I was.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by and dedicated [this lovely art](http://nawh.tumblr.com/post/156344324969/welcome-back-frank)

[I listen to them go about their lives. I listen to them talk to each other and use words like they’re fucking caresses and it’s as sweet as a cavity](http://vocaroo.com/i/s02betngJGU8). When I hear their sugar sweet promises, I want to gag; when I hear their candy coated “I love yous”, I want to wrap my hands around their throats. I want to cover their mouths with my hands, I want to shush them and smother them until I can’t hear a single thing. No words, no thundering heartbeats, no rushing blood; silence.

I should do it, could do it, I could hunt them down when they’re apart and I could put a knife between the little fag’s ribs and let him choke on his own blood. I could find a place close enough to the Fake to steal as many chromosomes as possible from him, leave him almost catatonic and take him back to my realm. I could keep him chained up, tied up, completely blind and dependent on me for every single thing.

I could do it, I’m not too weak yet, I’m falling but not fallen. I could sacrifice to the condemned again, I could sacrifice Fake’s little fag this time. He’s…not corrupted, not poisoned but there are shadows there and isn’t that just like Fake? He goes out and finds a little fag who’s tainted just enough to be interesting, to be worth something. Not much though! Ha that little fucker isn’t worth anything compared to the ones Fake has sacrificed to before!

Sacrificed to me and for me. He was a good servant, obedient as shit and a good fuck. I wonder if he thinks of me whenever he fucks this little fag and I wonder if he remembers how loud he screamed when I fucked him.  

“Mommy, is that man blind?”

I narrow my eyes at the child, the one pointing at me and wait for it to flinch away before I cross the road. I have to keep moving because I can’t blend into the shadows anymore and the regular, banal notice me when I’m standing in one spot for too long. This is one of the reasons I only come around at night but I couldn’t wait today, I needed to know what they were during and I was out the door before I realised what I was doing.

I cross the street, listening for cars, cross another street and slip into an alley that I know is deserted. I can barely hear them anymore and that’s pathetic, _disgusting_ ; I hate these limitations.  

I lean against a rough wall, flinching away from it before forcing myself back against it, I press my palms flat and rub hard. I need to hear them but I can’t do that without something to focus on, pain’s always good for focusing on and it’s easier to bleed in this body than my last one. Back then I didn’t need to focus to hear, back then I had to focus to block it all out but now I’m scrapping my palms against a wall and closing my eyes.

Even with the outside stimulus I’m straining to hear them over the sound of my own body, my own heart beating, my own stomach gurgling, my own skin being rubbed raw. I breathe in deep, wrinkle my nose at the smells and block it out; Fake is going out does Kohe want anything?

-No, I have woke- _work_ tonight and I’ll set- _get_ back after you.

-When will too- _you_ be back?

-I don’t go-so- _know_ , I’ll crawl- _call_

I want to gag, this is all so domestic and homely, and the absolute opposite of the shadow wraith I found in that ruined realm. Fake Frank, no he’s calling himself _Franklin_ isn’t he? Ha, he thinks he can separate himself from the original, thinks he can shuck off the identity I created for him. I think he’s delusional, thinking he can play house with this little faggot, pretending the war isn’t coming and that he won’t be forced to fight. I wonder if he knows and not just about the war but what he is, he was always so stupid.

Does he even know how…special is that the word I’m looking for? There aren’t many free links running around the omniverse, those fuckers with a ‘few extra chromosomes’ who’ll always have a few extra chromosomes because they keep producing more and more of their fucking own.

I wince when they slam a door, the sound is loud in my head, stuffing up my ears for a few seconds then I snap back to myself. My hands are bloody and it’s ‘red’ blood, red tinged with purple so dark it’s nearly black. The colours are abstract to me, red is anger, hot and boiling but purple is pleasure-pain and burning-cold and sweetness with a sour after taste. The red is straight forward and the purple is full of oxymoron which fits perfectly when the corruption is taken into account.  

So I don’t need to see when I can smell the copper and iron, almost alien to me, even though I came from this. I don’t need to see because I can hear the drip-drip-drip of iron rich blood falling plink-plink-plink on the ground. I can hear the pop-sizzle-hiss of poison purple blood eating away at the concrete.

I think about the days when I could hear the hissing in my flesh like snakes trapped just below my skin, in my veins. I remember taking the Fake as mine, the nights where he’d seek me out wherever I was and curl up next to me like a good little dog. I remember how he’d cock his head to the side looking at out past me but always thinking of me and I know he heard it too. I wonder if he still can, he’s weaker and so am I and he got his power from me so I wonder.

What can he do? Is the world dark for him now? Can he hear the sound of his own blood rushing in his veins or the beat his heart skips whenever he looks at the little faggot he found himself? Or is he deaf now too? Barely enough chromosomes to keep his head above water, barely enough to go travelling through all those abandoned realms.

I can’t follow him to those, it would take too much power and be too useless even though I’m burning to know what he does there. What he’s searching for or who? I don’t know and he never talks about it so I can’t even overhear it. I remember back to a time when I could hear him and I’m furious again.

Fake leaves the apartment and Kohe…takes out his fucking knife. I feel my lips curl back in a snarl that’s completely instinctive and a bloody hand jerks to my side. I can ignore it sometimes, forget the stab wound there and not healing the way it should but other times it’s all I can think of. Sometimes the sound of blood pumping just under the broken skin, the squelch and squish of clean edges rubbing together is the only thing I can hear.

My hands hurt but it’s a grounding pain, a nice pain, because I can focus on it instead of the sound of the knife against the whet stone. The slick sound of metal against stone, the drag that feels like a rusty saw over my brain and it’s times like these that I think he knows. I think he slams the fucking doors and sharpens his fucking knife and plays fucking metal because he knows I’m listening. Maybe even on just on the off chance because he’s smarter than the Fake or maybe I’m being paranoid.

I don’t know and I don’t give a fuck. I wipe my hands against the wall, remember that it doesn’t work like that and wipe them off against my pants. I know the red won’t show up against the dark colour because no one has stopped me yet and I know the tinge of purple isn’t enough to damage the cloth. I listen again, not straining to hear the apartment two streets away, and make sure there aren’t any people close enough to see me slipping out of the alley.

I listen carefully on the way home, make sure nothing is trailing after me in turn and slip into my shit apartment and into my shit bed. I don’t sleep for a long while, I’m staring blindly at the ceiling listening to the blood pumping in my own veins and…waiting.

A door below me slams and I hear her taking off her shoes, hear her slipping off her clothes and into the shower and finally drift off at the slick sounds of her rubbing soap over her skin.

* * *

“I swear to fuck girl, you need to stop picking up the douche bags.”

There’s someone in the apartment with her and he stops, he doesn’t recognise this voice and he has no idea who it is. It’s also three in the morning on a Saturday and she’s usually not here, he knows her routine now, she should be at home or out partying. She always takes the time off at the end of the week even though classes end on Wednesdays for her, she’s social and likes to go out with people. Even though he’s followed her once and knows she can’t stand the loud noise and crush of bodies, she likes the attention he thinks.

“IG, babe, look at me,” the person sighs and he hears skin brushing against skin, the sound of something-a napkin rubbing against a fleshy part-thigh. He can smell blood, faintly, it’s old, dried and crusted but not that old and he grits his teeth thinking about when he’d be able to tell exactly how long and where the blood was from. He leans against the stairwell wall and listens to them, breathes in the new smells that they make and tries to piece the situation together.

IG, she’s wearing nothing but a pair of boxers and large shirt, the blood is hers or on her at least. He can smell perfume, the perfume she wears when she wants to get laid but it’s mostly gone and it isn’t on the clothes she’s wearing now. He can smell sweat and alcohol but too much to be from drinking, he rests his head against the wall and breathes deep, there are some clothes soaking in the sink and the alcohol smell if coming from them.

The person with her smells of sweat too, smells like alcohol and it’s on their clothes too but no blood on this one. Someone shifts and he can smell the disinfectant the person is using to get the blood off; every brush of the soaked napkin sends more of the chemical scent wafting through the air.

“Isabella, please look at me,” the person whispers, barely loud enough for him to hear much less IG but the sound her hair shifting tells him she tilted her head. The scent of her hair dye is nearly as strong as the disinfectant and he wonders if she retouched the colour or did something new, he wishes he knew what she looked like at the very least but he satisfies himself with eavesdropping on her.

“You know I love you, right? You’re my best girl, babe.”

He listens to bottles clinking and the person getting up, he doesn’t recognise their smell either and he’s sure he’s never heard them over before. He doesn’t understand how this person could be such good friends with IG and never have come over in the full four months he’s been living here, fucked schedule not included. He keeps a track of everyone who comes to her apartment, at first it was boredom now it’s bordering obsession.

He knows the sound of her father’s footsteps on the tiles, the man smells of cigarettes half the time and alcohol the other half and has a nervous habit of clicking his teeth together. Her brother has stopped by once and Chin Chin thinks he’d be able to smell the shit cologne even without above average senses. He knows the string of men and women she brings back to her apartment, usually one night stands.

The stench of sex is always overwhelming; smelling her arousal always has him licking his lips and wanting…something. He wants to-wants to run his nose along her throat smelling the clean sweat and subtle pheromones mixing together into something erotic. He wants to bury his face between her legs, feel her thighs squeeze his head as he tastes her and makes her moan for him.

He knows what she smells like when she cums, the musky

“…I’m sorry Rob, I-I just need a smoke, okay?” IG mutters and her voice is deep again, grating and he remembers that from before, from when she was mad. He wants, he wants to touch her right now to press his lips to her split knuckles and taste her blood. He hears wants to smell her anger because she fought someone, it’s obvious, he isn’t sure why but her clothes smell like that type of sweat.

“I’ll throw that shit in the garbage, go shower,” IG adds and there’s a second where her friend hesitates but they’re moving away and IG is gathering up the tissue. He knows she’ll come out to smoke, that she’ll go to the roof because she’s been doing it more and more often. Ever since she found him on the roof she’s been going there hoping to catch him but he doesn’t think he’ll be able to speak to her tonight.

Speaking no, touching yes. Running his hands through her hair, pressing his lips to the hollow of her throat and breathing in her scent like an animal. He’s too interested in her, obsessed with her and he knows he should break it off before it grows but he can’t. She finds him there in the stairwell, leaning against the wall with his eyes closed and she doesn’t say anything for a while.

“You heard us talking?” she finally says but it isn’t a question and he’s glad she accepts the lie about ‘being blind made his hearing much better’ because sometimes he forgets to wear the annoy glasses and sometimes he forgets to use the frustrating cane. It’s useful when he’s in public with crowds and everything is almost overwhelming but in the building he doesn’t need it, it’s easy to forget it.

“Yes,” he answers and hears the breath catch in her throat and way her teeth click together. He could say he didn’t hear much or that he doesn’t, instead he says, “who did you fight?”

“How do you-whatever, he was a terf asshole,” she spits each word like a curse and her voice is rawer than he’s ever heard it. He feels something hot in his chest and it takes him a second to place it because it’s anger but it’s not anger on his own behalf it’s…it’s for her. He wants to smash this fuck’s teeth in, make him swallow his own tongue and leave him bleeding in the gutter. He doesn’t know what the fuck a terf is but he wants to condemn all of them.

Chin Chin wants to find this person, to beat them bloody and break their bones and make sure they know why he’s doing it. He’ll make fucking sure they know it’s because of IG, because they dared hurt her in any kind of way and the realisation leaves him cold.

“Sounds like a piece of shit, did you break his nose?” he asks calm as you please even though he wants to break things, to shout until he’s hoarse.

“Split my knuckles on his jaw, he broke a bottle and we both went down on it,” she explains with a shrug and he wants to press his lips to every blood spot. He wants to rub his cheek against her chest, to get her scent stuck in his nose until he always has it on him.

“Mmm, good night IG,” he tells her abruptly because he needs to leave before he does any of it. He turns as he says it, can feel her staring at him as he feels his way up the stairs and he waves at her as she passes his floor. He waits until she’s up on the roof to go inside, he races for his shitty bed and presses his face into a pillow. He doesn’t want to smell the nicotine on her breath but he does anyway because he doesn’t need pain to hone in on her, she’s just always there at the back of his mind and it’s a problem.

She breathes out his name, contemplatively, idly, and he groans through grit teeth. Yes a definite problem.

* * *

Chin Chin was waiting for him, somewhere near the window maybe but Frank knew he was waiting. He wondered what would happen if he ran, just broke into a dead sprint and ran as fast as he could. He wouldn’t get far without his eyes, even if he had these new ones that glinted red in the light and glowed in the dark he still couldn’t see good enough to run.

“Fake.”

The word echoed around him, shook his bones and he couldn’t, couldn’t think about anything but Chin Chin’s voice. He could hear it perfectly in his head, he didn’t need to translate the words piece by piece anymore and if this was the only thing he got from his sacrifice, then he’d still be thankful. He wanted power and here it was, pure, raw and his for the taking. How many of his servants had ever heard him like this, how many people even knew what his voice sounded like?

“Come.”

He was walking before he thought about it, was halfway across the room before he realised something was different. He wanted to say wrong but it wasn’t, not exactly.

“Look at me,” Chin Chin prompted and Frank could…he was looking out the window at the empty, abandoned buildings around Chin Chin’s apartment. He couldn’t see exactly but he could hear tiny claws scrapping over concrete and he could smell the smoke at the very edge of the decaying city. He could feel the concrete below his feet and he could feel the coolness of the glass even if he wasn’t touching it and something cool brushing his body, it didn’t feel like anything but it was something.

“What the fuck?” he asked, reaching up to feel his eyes which were closed but god it was like seeing almost. He opened them and saw nothing, the room was too dark and it wasn’t like these new eyes let him see anything, he’d tried already after all. But no he could sense Chin Chin, he was a big cold patch that Frank could feel even all the way across the room. He’d gotten caught out in a blizzard once and the only thing to do was walk it out, he’d spent a full day walking through the storm colder than he’d ever been in his entire life.

Chin Chin felt colder than that.

“Come here, _Frank_ ,” Chin Chin purred and the breath caught in his throat, choking him almost because Chin Chin had just. He was stumbling across the room, almost falling down twice because he couldn’t see but he didn’t give a shit anymore, Chin Chin had just called him Frank! Not Fake, not servant, not that one, Chin Chin had just used his name and was smile, Frank didn’t know how he knew he just did.

He slammed into the window hard but he didn’t give a fuck. He was feeling along the glass, taking careful steps until he was finally next to Chin Chin but stopped before he touched. They’d fucked, Frank has been on his knees in front of his Dark Lord and ridden his God’s cock until his thighs burned and his chest was tight. He’d moaned into Chin Chin’s mouth, cut his tongue on rows of predator sharp teeth, been scratched by nails so sharp they had to be claws and bruised by hands strong enough to snap his bones.

But this was different and Frank kept his hands to himself. He could still hear the tiny claws scratching away; rats but the closest rats were at least three streets over because they were afraid of the birds. Frank breathed carefully, in and out, thinking about how far he was hearing if those really were rats.

“Good boy,” Chin Chin praised him, reaching out and dragging him close. So cold, freezing, burning. Frank leaned into the touch even if the hand on his shoulder was too tight, squeezing hard enough to dent the bone almost, he was used to it though because Chin Chin wasn’t something soft. Chin Chin was smoke, cold and darkness all wrapped up in one all powerful package and Frank was the one lucky enough to be pulled into the god’s shadow.

“Look at you,” Chin Chin whispered, lips peeling back from his teeth in something that was technically a smile and Frank could see it. He could…he _was_ seeing. He was looking at himself in the reflection of the window, standing tall and strong with eyes that glowed back at him. He could see the white scars at the sides of his face, like someone had superimposed the veins onto the skin around his eyes. He could see the blood stains on his shirt, the ones that he missed when he scrubbed it in the sink but somehow it was a good look on him.

He could see the lazy smirk on his own face; he looked self-satisfied, arrogant and…powerful.

“You’re everything I hoped for,” Chin Chin told him, and Frank could see Chin Chin too, hanging over his shoulder like a spectre. His eyes were closed but his lips were still curled back in that smile and most of his body was shadowy, indistinct the way Frank was used to. They looked good standing there together, Frank with his glowing red eyes ~~cursed eyes~~ and Chin Chin just behind him, hands draped possessively over him and it felt fucking good to be owned.

“One last touch,” Chin Chin said and one of the hands on his shoulder disappeared. The shades looked heavy tinted, were probably dark enough to hide his eyes even in pitch black and Chin Chin was giving them to him. He almost wanted to put them on right that second because his Lord was giving him something. Something more than these eyes and this understanding but no, no he had to control himself.

“Welcome back, _Frank_ ,” Chin Chin snarled with his ‘smile’ still fixed perfectly in place and Frank let himself relish in the name. He basked in the attention, whole and undivided and completely missed the way Chin Chin wasn’t referring to him, not exactly. He was too high on praise and acceptance to realise the name wasn’t for him, that it was gloating.

Frank was too caught up in the dazzle of seeing again and smelling and hearing and having his Lord pressed up against him like this. He was too caught up in the hissing he could hear just under Chin Chin’s flesh and the heartbeat he could feel against his back.

 


	4. Splashes of Colour

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He's blind, his world is dark and has been for chromosomes. His world is bright, she brought back the light.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by so much good art from [aesthediccsucc](https://aesthediccsucc.tumblr.com/)

[He was going to die. Right here and now he was going to die, alone.](http://vocaroo.com/i/s0e8TS3aPATp)

Frank knew he was going to die because, because, because fucking _Chin Chin_ had left him. Chin Chin had left him in some pitch black realm and Chin Chin left him defenceless and Chin Chin **_left_** him.

“Fuck,” he hissed, dragging himself backwards with his elbows because fuck, fuck, fuck. His legs were fucked up and he could barely twitch his big toe so fucking forget about running away. He was stuck in some realm where everything was pitch black and he couldn’t even see his dirt covered hand flapping in front of his face but he could sure as fuck see the glowing pinpricks so close.  

They were yellow. They were green. They were coming closer, inching closer, taking one step for every inch he managed to drag himself away.

“Fuck you,” he snarled but it was a whimper, he couldn’t run and he was already bleeding, bleeding out, that was probably how this fucking thing had found him. His stupid blood from his stupid legs because he’d fallen off a fucking cliff because it was too fucking dark to see anything. Chin Chin had found him at the bottom, bleeding but alive, cursing but dazed and Chin Chin had carried him to this place.

Frank coughed, hacked up spit and mucus and blood and spat it at whatever was stalking him. Chin Chin had left him here, somewhere with dead grass and cool dirt which meant he was underneath a tree but he couldn’t fucking see anything. The sky was empty except for two stars and the ground was dark except for the two eyes, the ones moving side to side, swaying like fireflies in the breeze and Frank was in so much pain. He wasn’t sure whether he was actually hearing the low voice whispering, not sure if he was hallucinating the things running over his legs, feeling like wisps of something tugging at him.

He could just as easily be hearing the wind through the dead grass, bouncing off the cliff face that had to be close by. Maybe he was hearing his own frantic heartbeat and mistaking it for whispering or fuck. Frank had met all kinds of fucked up shit in his own realm, what if the thing right in front of him, the thing with the yellow, green eyes was speaking to him? What if it was trying to send him crazy before it fucking ate him?

“Chin Chin,” he begged as he dragged another two steps, elbows digging into the cool dirt, ripping the sleeves of his shirt and tearing at his skin. This dirt was rough, gritty, but it gave him a good grip at least…and then he slipped.

He felt his elbow slipping out from under him, the entire length of his arm grating away against the dirt with white hot pain. He scrambled to keep his balance, tried to stay up on one trembling arm but he couldn’t and his head cracked against the ground when he finally fell. He saw spots in front of his face, bright coloured spots; pink and red and yellow and blue, some green.

He couldn’t move, his calves were already slashed open and one leg was broken and the pain was too much. The pain was so sharp it took his breath away, felt like the fire burning him, felt like he was breaking his leg all over again. He was staring up at blackness with two piercing pricks of light on the very edge of what he could see and he was struggling to get his arms back underneath him because the yellow-green were coming closer.

He was going to die.

…and that wasn’t bad. He didn’t want to die but, but, but…fuck.

When the thing touched his leg, the broken one, he screamed. The sound was primal, guttural and so hoarse he didn’t think he’d be able to talk again, he couldn’t even stop himself. When the thing dropped itself on him, he gasped but he didn’t have the breath to scream again even though the fucking thing was heavy and he could feel the ragged edges of bone rubbing against each other. He could feel parts of the thing sliding against his exposed skin, through the ripped up pants, and it was smooth and dry not what he thought.

Well at least it explained why he didn’t hear it sneaking up, no footfalls because huge ass snakes didn’t fucking have feet. Frank was about to start laughing because oh god he was going to be swallowed whole by a god damn snake then it slithered further up his body and dropped itself on his chest.

He was panting for breath, breathing so fast he thought he was going to pass the fuck out when more of the thing moved over his chest. The whispering was louder, like voices shouting and screaming and snarling at him but in whispers and he was probably hallucinating the fuck out of this experience. He couldn’t see anything but those yellow-green…eyes?

He thought they were eyes, they were staring him right in the face, swaying side to side and he was following them. He was straining against the weight on his chest to follow, almost forgot his fucking broken leg and tried to kick out so he could get up. He was following it, swaying his head with it, and didn’t even care when something flickered against his cheek.

The thing flicked over his lips, over his nose, so close to his eyes, but he didn’t care. It was dragging itself over him, making his broken bones grate against each other and he swore to fuck he could hear it. The sickening sound of broken pieces and bits of bone rubbing together, sliding against each other like tectonic plates ready to snap under pressure only these were already broken bones being squeezed and getting ready to snap again.

The whisper-screams were loud too, almost filling up his head, but he couldn’t really hear them over the sound of his own bones. They were saying things but he couldn’t understand, he just wanted to follow the yellow-green green-yellow, he just wanted to get closer to it.

He was, he was, he was.

“O Chin Chin?”

Yellow-green _gone_.

The weight was off him, the grass was under him and he was-

“Fuck!” he wheezed, coughing so hard his ribs ached, but he was sucking in air. He was breathing so hard but not fast, he was greedy for it but he was taking his time to savour it all. He’d learned after the time Chin Chin had actually given him food when he’d been starving, when he’d torn huge chunks out of the dried meat and swallowed without chewing. He’d vomited it all up again and he’d cried and he’d-

He was laying in the grass and he couldn’t hear anything over his own heartbeat galloping away in his ears. He was staring up at the sky but he couldn’t see anything because he was pitch black again but he could…he could smell something?

With every frantic breath he could smell something; sour and almost bloody but not there, not human blood at least, not his blood. Which was good, that was good, Frank had to force himself to remember why that was good. It was good because it meant he wasn’t bleeding out, or losing any more blood than he’d already lost and he’d lost too much already.

Silver? Was that the smell? Was the snake’s blood like silver? Or was Frank just fucking hallucinating again but this time it was scents because he was sure as fuck smelling things that shouldn’t be there. Blood that smelt like his broken chain and something spicy-sweet, overpowering even but not as strong as the smoke, the thick smoke that was clogging up his mind.

“Ore wa Chin Chin ga daisuki.”

Frank still didn’t understand a single word Chin Chin said in his…language but he didn’t think this was meant to be words, not this time.

“O Chin Chin?”

Frank wasn’t ready for the sound of flesh being ripped apart. He felt something cold in the pit of his stomach and he didn’t know why, this wasn’t new to him and he’d done it plenty of times for himself. Frank had no idea why he closed his eyes and tried to breathe through the wet, lush sounds of flesh being torn and bones cracking under pressure. He tried to focus on the steady ache all over his body and not on the greedy, animal grunting so close all he had to do was reach one shaking hand out and he’d brush against Chin Chin.

The snake never made a sound, not a single one, and that was maybe worse? This really was a different realm and it set Frank on edge, like nearly being eaten by some monster snake he couldn’t see wasn’t bad enough. He breathed hard, in out, in out and when something wet splashed his cheek, he winced away and didn’t think about it.

He couldn’t see it, if he couldn’t see it then it was okay right? And, and, and Chin Chin hadn’t left him! Yeah Chin Chin had come back, saved him from the invisible monster snake and now he was…eating it.

“Eat,” Chin Chin offered and Frank was about to ask what the fuck when he felt it. The hunk of meat was cold and it was bloody and it was being pressed against his lips and he was pretty fucking sure Chin Chin hadn’t moved.

“Can’t eat raw meat asshole,” he spat from the corner of his mouth, nearly gagging when some of the blood leaked in anyway. Silver had been right, the shit tasted like silver, old silver maybe which was the only silver Frank knew anyway. The taste was thick, coated his tongue and stayed with him even after he swallowed and fuck, it shouldn’t taste good right? This was blood, plain and simple and not even human blood and it shouldn’t taste good.

“Fragile fuck,” Chin Chin snorted but Frank was being dragged up, there were hands on his arms, clawed fingers digging into his skin but not breaking it. There was more than one pair of hands on him, there was more than one fucking pair of hands on him and Frank couldn’t even fight them. There were two hands on his thighs and a pair on his face, cradling his cheeks, and there was one on the back of his head, three holding his broken leg out straight and still.

Then the light, blinding red after the pitch black and Frank still couldn’t see. There were hands on him, all over him, squeezing almost too tight, touching almost too hard but it felt…good. The fingers pressing into the bruises along his thighs sent electric shivers up his spine, the hands squeezing over his slashed up calves were-they felt.

The meat was back at his lips but he could feel the difference, it was crisp and warmer but not hot and it smelled fucking delicious. He didn’t try to fight this time, the first time had been hard enough, he was so used to just shoving food in his mouth as soon as he got it but he knew how important it was to wait. Wait for the food to cool, wait for it to cook, wait between bites but this time he didn’t have to because the hand was pushing the chunk into his mouth.

Spicy? Frank thought it was spicy, a little sweet too but that might be the fingers still dripping with silver blood. He chewed, or tried to, while those fingers rubbed over his tongue; slim, clawed and covered in blood and still not the worst thing he’d ever had in his mouth. Another piece of meat being shoved into his mouth but Frank didn’t fight at all this time, he opened as wide as he could with the fingers pressing down his tongue and just swallowed.

More and more strips of meat were fed to him, always there before he could ask for it just like the hands. The hands on his thighs, stroking up and down, squeezing just hard enough to feel nice with the knuckles that brushed up against his cock every so often. There was a hand on his jaw, keeping his head still mostly but cold finger tips stroked his cheek and every so often a freezing thumb would trace his lips.

By the time his eyes adjusted to the burning red light, he could barely keep them open between the taste of the meat and the hands touching him everywhere, stroking him everywhere, squeezing and caressing. His legs didn’t even feel that bad anymore, his aching ribs had calmed down to and when Frank managed to force his eyes open, he couldn’t even be shocked. He’d known Chin Chin wasn’t human from the start, not with those teeth or those eyes or that body but now, well now it was…hard to miss.

“Such a little bitch,” Chin Chin scoffed and Frank couldn’t even care because fuck him. There was blood, so much of it and it was red, or maybe it was just red under the strange light but there was still too much. Chin Chin was sitting back on his haunches, head tilted to one side in a way that wasn’t exactly human and he was more than five feet away. Frank didn’t want to glance down to figure out what the fuck was touching him because that would mean taking his eyes off the thing in front of him.

The thing with skin paler than paper and with more teeth than Frank could count stuffed in its mouth and splattered in blood. There was so much and Frank couldn’t get over it, the red was so vivid, that shit was fucking metallic almost and he couldn’t take his eyes off it. Not when it covered Chin Chin’s hands like bloody gloves, or where it was smeared over his lips or even the flecks of red reflecting from the hollow of Chin Chin’s throat.

Frank could see the body of the thing-snake and it was fucking huge, bigger than he would’ve guessed. He could see the guts hanging out and he could see the thing’s heart…moving and god he didn’t want to think about it. His eyes swept over the long body, half coiled, and it was probably white but the red light made it red too and the deeper red had to be where its own blood had spilled onto it. It’s sweet blood.

“More?” Chin Chin offered, holding out hand, one actually attached to his body and Frank, Frank scrambled to his knees. He was nearly shocked enough to freeze but he was already crawling over, crawling with bruised and aching muscles but not on broken legs and cut flesh. The hands were still on him, keeping his mouth open and helping him stay upright because even if his leg wasn’t broken he was still shaky.

The hands helped him into Chin Chin’s lap, they squeezed his cock while he lapped at the blood, sucking on the long fingers actually attached to a wrist and an arm and a body. The blood was still sweet, sweeter even from the hand that feeds but Frank couldn’t even savour it; he needed more, more, more. When fingers tangled in his hair and jerked his head back, he didn’t fight it, when a cold mouth descended on his and an ice cold tongue licked into his mouth, he sighed into the kiss.

He owed this fucker his life and his full belly and his unbroken legs, he owed Chin Chin so much and maybe, maybe he could pay it back. Chin Chin had come back for him, Chin Chin had killed the giant ass snake that tried to eat him and now Chin Chin had fixed him. If the weird entity wanted some breathless kisses, Frank could do that, if Chin Chin wanted to fuck his ass until he couldn’t remember his own name, then Frank could do that.

He could more than do that.

* * *

“F-fuck yes, harder!”

He shoves the pillow harder against his head and tries to map out his own body. He tries to focus on the purple blood still seeping sluggishly from his side and he tries to breathe in the cheap soap he scrubbed himself raw with. He tries to focus on the scratchy sheets and he tries as hard as he can to-

“Spencer!”

Fucking.

Her precum is thick in his nose, so thick it’s coating his tongue and he’s almost gagging for her cock. He can hear her frantic heart beat-beat-beating away in her chest so loud it’s a steady throb in his head, his pants. She’s on her back, head thrown back against the pillows and he can smell her hair dye on them which means her hair is wild too.

He wants to be the one pinning her arms above her head, to be the one sucking marks into the smooth skin of her throat. He wants to press his lips to her pulse point and feel the life there, he wants to glide his nose along the line of her jaw breathing deep enough to get her scent to haunt him in his dreams. He wants to be the one smoothing a hand along her thigh, squeezing the taunt muscles and soft fat, ghosting along her cock but never touching.

“Mmmm-more!”

He rolls over onto his stomach and bites down on a moan, he’s better than this, better than lusting after some woman who takes one night lovers to her bed. He should be better than this but he’s not, not anymore, because he’s humping the bed, hips moving without him wanting them too. He bites down on the pillow and moans as loudly as he can, just once to get it out of his system, then he’s snaking one hand between the mattress and his own body.

He can almost think this is her hand, soft and long fingered and warm. He can almost pretend she has her legs hooked around his waist, that her heels are digging into his back and not ‘Spencer’. Is he jealous? Of course he’s fucking jealous, no one else was supposed to touch his things but he couldn’t stop it from happening anymore. Sure he could stalk downstairs and fling ‘Spencer’ out the window before IG even realised what happened but there are consequences now.

Consequences like having to listen to IG get laid every other night. Consequences like having to shove his head under a pillow, even though he’s listening as hard as he can, and jacking off under the sheets.

His cock is heavy in his hand, hard and already leaking precum. He listens to her moans, the deep sensual ones and the short girlish ones, he listens to her stuttering gasps and hitching moans and starts slow. He tries to keep to his own rhythm, to go as fast or as slow as he pleased but he can’t, he couldn’t, he can’t.

His hand is dry on his cock but there’s enough precum to make it the good kind of uncomfortable. She arches her back and he fucks into his hand, fingers tight, thumb stroking over the head and just under it as ‘Spencer’ rubs against her prostate with his cock. The noise she makes isn’t human because no human could sound this debauched or this beautiful, he knows enough of them that he can make that judgement after all.

“Yessss,” she hisses, clawing at the sheets and craning her neck to beg for kisses. ‘Sponcer’ leaves her desperate and pouting but Chin Chin wouldn’t have, he would have treated her so much better. He thinks about it while he continues fucking his hand in time with her, he thinks about eating her out for hours until she cums all over herself without him once touching her cock. He thinks about kissing her, tasting the cheap cigarettes she buys and breathing in the scent of her hair dye that he’s nearly sure is purple.

He thinks about looking at her from someone else’s eyes, if only for a second. He thinks about what she looks like and decides on beautiful even if he can’t see it, she sounds beautiful, the sounds she’s making right now are sinful. The grunts, the gasps and begging, if he wasn’t already falling he would’ve fallen for her because here’s a woman who could get armies to fall at her feet.

“Ha-ha-ahhhh, cl-cl-cumming!”

She’d been grinding down on the cock in her ass, trying to get as much as she could and he could hear every clench of muscle and every creak of the bone. Now she’s sloppy, barely able to squeeze ‘Sponcer’s’ cock every time he rocks into her and Chin Chin knows he’s close too. He’s always been her bitch, even before she knew it and before he knew her, he’s always been at her disposal as much as he hated it.

He knows he could fuck her better, be better for her. He knows IG isn’t just a clever shortening of her name and he knows she spends hours in front of her mirrors trying to perfect her appearance as if she isn’t already a work of perfection. He knows she cries sometimes, will start crying for no reason he can guess sometimes, and will keep doing whatever it is she’s doing even while crying. Chin Chin wants to fuck her, god does he want to fuck her, but he also wants to be there for her.

“Ah fuck **_yes_**!

He cums in his hand, hot and sticky, he cums in his boxers and gets some on the sheets too. She’s downstairs, shuddering and panting and moaning and clenching around the dick still in her ass, pounding away. He’s upstairs breathing hard through his nose and biting his lips with teeth that are too dull but they keep him mostly quiet at least. Their heartbeats are in sync and Chin Chin almost thinks this is better than what he had with Fake, almost.

Fake was an investment, a promise for the war. IG was a distraction, a subtle, sweet distraction from the life he lives now.

She fills up his senses so he can sleep. She helps him cum harder than any of his other physical lovers ever have and he wonders if it’s part of falling or part of her. He thinks maybe it’s her.

“Cum for me baby.”

Oh yes it’s her, all her, and he wants her so badly.


	5. Compare and Contrast

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Four people, two relationships-three, four?

[He shows up in the middle of the day with a bottle of her favourite wine and a pack of his flavoured cigarettes.](http://vocaroo.com/i/s0ekD2kPxs13) He shows up in the middle of a semi-scheduled cry/scream into pillows and hope no one complained session. He pounds on the door until she drags herself upright and forces herself to the door, not even caring that she looks like shit and that her clothes are all rumpled and fucked because she’s _exhausted_.  

“Go the fuck away,” she grunts before she even realises who’s been trying to break down her door. Even when she does recognise the scuffed converse, because fuck looking up at their face, she doesn’t apologise or any of that shit.

“Therapy session, I even scheduled,” he jokes, sticking his scuffed up converse between the door and the frame so she can’t close it. She glances up so she can glare at him but he’s, he’s not grinning at her the way she’s used to and he’s not smirking or any kind of arrogant and God she just wants someone who won’t try to cheer up her right now. She wants to be sad, for once, and she just wants a friend to maybe drink with her.

IG sincerely doubts ‘Dick’ could be that friend but she’s desperate; he’s not going to leave and she’s too tired to argue. She lets him in, hesitating for a second before she grabs one of his arms and tucks it into the crook of hers because he definitely hasn’t been over enough to know the layout of her apartment. Also she may have thrown shit on the floors and she’d only feel worse if her blind neighbour that she may or may not have some kind of feelings for fell on his face because she made him navigate her floor.

“The bathroom?” he asks when she leads him around a broken figurine and she catches herself nodding. Sometimes she wonders if he needs her to narrate things, like when she’s holding out something for him and he’ll just take it from her hand without even turning his head in her direction. He won’t take things the way a normal person would, he’ll curl his fingers around her wrist and slide his palm along her wrist until he had a good grip on whatever she was handing him.

Sometimes she thinks he’s too proud to ask her for things, she’s seen him standing outside the apartment building fighting with his keys and the lock. She doesn’t know why he has a huge bunch of keys or why none of them have personal markers but she’d watched him once, for a few seconds, feeling each key and carefully feeling for the lock so he could try every single key. She’d hesitated for a seconds before she went over and used her key, saying she had to get in real quick and held the door open for him.

“Yes,” she says aloud, wrinkling her nose as she realises the bottle of polish she knocked over did actually break and now there’s a hot pink puddle on her carpet. She sighs and it’s just one more thing, it’s a stupid thing but it’s still a thing and she just wants a break.

“I bought the wrong wine and didn’t realise until I got home but I remember you liking this one,” he explains as he pulls his hand from her arm and feels for the edge of the tub. She sniffs a little and sits on the closed toilet seat, the wine is her favourite but it’s expensive; it’s the kind her dad keeps around the house for company. She wonders why Dick was even buying expensive wine and which one he wanted to get.

She takes the bottle when he holds it out to her and takes a drink straight from the fucking thing because why not?

Dick climbs into her tiny ass tub and has to bend one leg while the other hangs out but he doesn’t seem to mind. He’s got that half amused smile going and he’s shaking a cigarette from the pack and she doesn’t know where he gets those either because they’re illegal here. She holds some wine in her mouth while he lights up and she thinks about the taste, it’s fruity and it’s the only wine she actually likes. She wonders what it would taste like if she mixed cinnamon with it, she wonders if she’d actually get the taste of the cigarette if she kissed him.

“What do you even do?” she asks before she can stop herself, looking away even though he can’t see her face, it’s just natural. Dick doesn’t answer at once, he takes some time to enjoy his cigarette and blow wobbling smoke rings at the ceiling and shakes the legging hanging over the edge.

“Freelance,” he answers eventually and she already knows he’s smirking before she even looks at him. She purses her lips because wow, that’s so descriptive, he could be anything from a freelance artist to a freelance hitman and she doesn’t doubt he could do both. She doesn’t know what it is about him that makes her think he could, makes him seem like he doesn’t belong in this apartment building on the whole.

Physically he looks like a normal guy, he wears scuffed up converse all the time and he wears skinny jeans that show off a tight ass. He’s got soft looking black hair she wants to run her fingers through and sometimes he has the perfect amount of stubble that she just wants to rub her cheek against until it’s stinging. He’s got these subtle muscles that well, honestly she wants to fuck him, pretty bad but she doesn’t think he’s interested.

He’s never-never said anything and he doesn’t act like any of the people she’s banged before, he doesn’t give her not so subtle compliments, he doesn’t laugh at her jokes or rest his hand on her arm. He doesn’t touch her on a whole, except when she’s guiding him somewhere, he makes a point of not touching her which might be part of the whole blind thing but she doesn’t know.

Still, she thinks she might be his only friend, she hears him breaking things still but not as often and she hears him shouting but there’s never any answer. He could be on the phone with someone but she doesn’t think so because even she isn’t on the phone that much and she has friends beyond the people in this building.

“What do you look like?” he asks just as she’s taking another gulp of wine and she nearly sprays all of it on him because oh fuck. She swallows as fast as she can and coughs because oh fuck.

“IG?”

She coughs harder and leans over her knees trying to catch her breath and tries to think of what to say, what to tell him. She hadn’t thought about this at all, god she should’ve thought about it, he was fucking blind and probably hadn’t wanted to ask because it’d be awkward. Shit it’s awkward now because how should she even start?

“Isabella?” 

Fuck her name sounds good coming from him, he puts the stress on the ‘l’ and says the first half of her name in a voice that’s almost husky and shit she’s into it. He’s sitting up in the tub, cigarette hanging from his fingers and eyebrows scrunched together even though he’s not looking at her face. He’s looking in her direction though, a little to the left with unfocused eyes which are definitely not red, she has no idea why she ever thought that. His eyes are brown, a rich dark brown and it reminds her of huge piles of dead wood just before they’re set on fire, just before the flames eat them up.

“I’m, fuck sorry,” she gasps when she can finally breathe again and sits back up while he keeps staring over her shoulder, the right this time. His lips are so red when he purses them around the cigarette and his lashes are long enough to brush against his cheeks when he blinks all slow and sensual. She wonders if he means to look so languid and erotic, if he even knows he looks like something right off the cover of a raunchy adult novel.

“Uh, I have purple hair, more on the blue tone than red,” she tries to explain but descriptions were never her strong point, she liked analytical essays with everything meticulously laid out. She takes another slow drink of wine while she considers what else she can tell him and how best to describe it, she has no idea what he’d know and what he wouldn’t. Fuck she doesn’t even know if colours mean anything to him or if he never saw them.

“My nose is kind of long and a little crooked from breaking it so much as a kid,” she tells him, rocking forward and back, forward and back slowly as she pieces herself together. She hasn’t had to think about her appearance in a while, the component pieces at least; usually she’s wondering how to make her jaw softer or how to make her lips look fuller. She looks at her entire face and decides what needs work and what needs touching up and what can be covered up with concealer.

“Thin lips, brown eyes, uhm small ears I guess?” she laughs uncertainly because of course Dick’d ask her what she looks like when she literally hates everything about herself. She hates that her hips are too narrow and she hates that she has to shave every two days and she really fucking hates how defined her jawline is. Sometimes she just wears a god damn face mask and says it’s allergies, sometimes she wears high waisted skirts and leggings and huge sweaters because they look cute and they help hide her up.

She drinks more wine and clenches her teeth because fuck.

“May I touch you?” Dick asks and IG gasps a sharp breath through her nose. He’s half leaning out of the tub now and the cigarette needs ashing before it falls on the floor but she doesn’t think he even remembers he has it. She thinks about it for a second, really thinks about it because she doesn’t have a problem with touching, she likes touching. She sleeps with people because she likes sex, she hugs her friends because she likes cuddles, casual physical affection is her favourite thing but this isn’t that. She doesn’t think Dick has ever done anything casually affectionate in his life, he doesn’t seem like that kind of guy.

“Yeah sure,” she sighs, says? She isn’t sure but Dick doesn’t hesitate, his cold fingers glide along her nose before they drop to her shoulder. They’re leaning so close that IG can feel herself slipping off the toilet seat but she doesn’t push herself back, she could fall but she doesn’t think she will.

“Sorry,” Dick murmurs but his hand skims the length of her collar bone and she’s glad she’s wearing such a thick turtleneck because she honestly doesn’t think she’d be able to hand skin on skin contact without doing something stupid. His hands are always so cold, no matter what, and the backs of his fingers are freezing where they brush the edge of her jaw and then they stop. She knows he wants to touch her face, to map out what she looks like maybe because to be honest, her description was shit. She told a blind man she had purple hair, she told him that she had a crooked nose like that mattered somehow.

“You can keep going,” she breathes and she has no idea why her heart is suddenly in her throat. This time he does hesitate, his hand shakes as he cups her cheek and she forces herself not to lean into the touch, his thumb traces the length of her nose and he can probably feel the break just on the bridge. She wonders if it adds character to how he ‘sees’ her now, then his thumb is gliding along her slightly parted lips and she stops breathing entirely.

She wants to purse her lips, she wants to turn her head into his palm and kiss it, she wants to lick the finger against her mouth. She wants to slide off the toilet and climb into the tub with him, to pin him down and kiss him full on the mouth. She wants to taste the cigarette he’s smoking and chase down the hints of cinnamon and wants to hear him moan, even if he’s only moaning because she accidentally kneed him in the crotch.

He runs his thumb over her lips again and she wonders what his cock would taste like hot and heavy on her tongue. She already likes sucking dick, just the heft of it in her mouth, the ache in her jaw and how easy it is to make those guys praise her, call her beautiful, say she’s the best little cock sucker. She wonders how long it would take to make him call her pretty, if that even meant anything to him, maybe he’d say her mouth felt good or something about her smell.

His hand moves across her face, slowly, and she has to force herself to keep still and not assault her neighbour, friend? He feels her nose again, the tip of his index tapping the point of it and she catches the end of a smile on his face as he does it. He carefully feels over both of her eyes and then down the other cheek to her chin and even if it’s methodical, just him making up a picture of what she must look like, the amount of intimacy makes her cross her legs tight. She can only imagine how he’d touch other parts of her.

Somehow his hand ends up in her hair, just carding through it, and there’s the strangest expression on his face like he’s confused by something. His brows are furrowed and his mouth is decidedly neutral but she can feel the confusion, maybe she doesn’t look the way he thought she did?

“IG stands for Isabella Gwen,” he says but it’s a question, he wants confirmation even though he says her name like they’re in bed and he’s got his face between her legs. She swallows very hard at the imagery and does **_not_** think about a smirk on his face or about red, red lips shiny from spit and…

“Yes.”

“A beautiful name for a beautiful girl.” And he’s smiling right at her and she’s so fucking shocked she doesn’t even know what to say. She chokes on her spit and he’s still smiling but he’s not laughing, he’s not saying ‘just kidding’ or ‘yeah right!’ he’s not, he’s not mocking her.

“That’s a shit line, dude,” she sputters but she’s smiling, he made her smile. He’s smiling at her and he made her smile, she thinks she might be in deep shit.

“Made you smile and I love making pretty girls smile.”

She’s in deeper shit than previously thought. 

* * *

 

 

“What is this?” Frank had asked once, had asked one of those long, lost days of summer and Chin Chin hadn’t bothered to answer him. Frank remembered the way Chin Chin looked away, well turned his head away with a ghost of a smile on his lips.

Frank had wondered for a while because he was pretty sure the black shit wasn’t oil and it wasn’t cum because even if Chin Chin wasn’t exactly human, his cum was still sticky and white. Besides, the sticky black tar didn’t always show up, only sometimes and it never seemed to have any real reason to be there then it would just disappear.

Sometimes it left a stain on his fingers, sometimes it vanished like it had never existed, more often it left stains he could barely see and looked like shadows moving across his skin when he could see them. Sometimes it was sticky and stuck to his skin in clumps and chunks like it didn’t want to leave, sometimes it was slick and so oily it slid right off his hands. Sometimes it stung, not bad but enough for him to notice, other times it was almost pleasant and smelled sweet.

Chin Chin would turn his head to Frank with a strange twisting smile on his face, he’d say something under his breath in the language Frank was slowly figuring out. He would curl a hand around Frank’s neck and leave it there, a cool presence to remind him he wasn’t alone while he tried to figure out what the black stuff was. Sometimes he would even drape himself over Frank’s back and hum songs Frank didn’t know, he might even press a few sharp toothed kisses along Frank’s nck.

“Where are we?” Frank had asked when Chin Chin led him along a set of train tracks that were overgrown with weeds and rusting away. He remembered the way Chin Chin turned until he was walking backwards and smiled with all of his teeth, all those rows of sharp teeth that glinted even if there wasn’t light to catch. Chin Chin had winked, brought one of his detached hands to his lips with a cigarette Frank was pretty sure he didn’t have before and taken a nice deep breath.

Frank had rolled his eyes hard but opened his mouth for the other cigarette, pursing his lips at the faint taste of blood and cinnamon on it. He still isn’t sure if the taste was something inherent to Chin Chin or just hung around him because he killed so much shit. Back then, all of his food had come from Chin Chin and all of what Chin Chin fed him was something he’d killed himself.

Rolling over in bed now, Frank remembers the taste of snake, the huge titanboa that had tried to eat him back in a nameless realm. He remembers the fear ripping through him and he remembers Chin Chin killing it, gutting it, ripping out huge chunks with his too many teeth and swallowing the bloody pieces whole. Frank remembers the taste of silver blood on his tongue and he wants to spit, he remembers the pieces of barely cooked meat sliding down his throat and warming him from the inside out.

Chin Chin hadn’t been bad to him, that was the fucked up part, Chin Chin had been _great_. He’d made sure Frank had enough to eat and a warm place to sleep, he’d introduced Frank to a realm with computers and instant noodles. Sure he’d been a weird fuck but it was just how he **_was_** , Frank had never thought anything was off about it. They’d travelled a lot back then, Chin Chin meeting with people he introduced Frank to, leaving Frank on his own to go do whatever it was he did but always coming back.

Every little scrape and bruise got fixed better than before he’d gotten it, Frank had learned to live with all the little aches and pains of life but Chin Chin had taken them all away. There wasn’t a single scar on Frank’s body, not a single blemish or-

He shoves his hands under the pillow to stop himself from clawing at his own face. There’s only one scar now and at the time he didn’t think about it because he’d been in so much pain and he’d been so happy. He’d gouged out his own eyes _for_ Chin Chin, he’d gotten new eyes _from_ Chin Chin, he was going to rule the omniverse _with_ Chin Chin. He’d been high on pain and pleasure and praise and promises, too high to realise the scars were still there even after Chin Chin kissed him.

Frank had been too caught up in hearing and smelling and tasting for the first time to realise his face was still a mess. He knows now that the scars mark him as Chin Chin’s as much as the eyes do, maybe more, he can hide the eyes pretty easy but the scars are harder.

His fingers twitch but he curls them into tight fists and tries to make himself breathe. He flexes every muscle he can and relaxes, he shrugs his arms to make sure there’s nothing grabbing at him and rolls over onto his back. He remembers seeing the strings for the first time with his new eyes, seeing the strings at all actually, and he thinks Chin Chin slipped up that one time.

They’d been thin and red, angry red like the thinnest slices from a razor blade. They’d been wrapped around his arms and his wrists, they’d been around his neck like a noose and then they were gone. He can’t forget them though, can’t forget his own expression wavering in the mirror and he thinks that was the beginning of the end for them.

He tries to get the memory out of his head because he doesn’t want to think about being bound to Chin Chin, he’s not anymore. Frank _knows_ he isn’t but he can’t forget the thin red lines so he thinks about them in a different way. He pulls his hands from under the pillow and brings his left hand close to his face, close enough to see…nothing because the scar isn’t there. There should’ve been jagged lines all down the back of his hand from glass, a glass window he’d broken in a half-abandoned realm and stuck his hand through to open the door from the inside.

Chin Chin had run his tongue over the torn skin, had pressed a mocking kiss to his hand, and the cuts had healed right in front of his eyes. Frank felt along his hip where he should have deep scarring from being dragged along hot asphalt for god knew how long, dragged away by a giant wolf thing before Chin Chin came to save him. Cold hands on burning skin, held there for a few seconds and there wasn’t even a bruise to prove it had ever happened.

He’s. He stares up at the dark ceiling and wishes he could just fucking sleep. He’s been up for three days so far and okay, he’s usually up for thirty hours no problem but he’s tired, exhausted. He fought his way through the condemned realm, he stole Safari Man from them and got them back to this realm without getting his spleen ripped out and shoved up his own ass. He’s…still awake.

It’s twelve, midnight exact, Frank’s never sure how he knows but he’s past questioning shit like that. He rolls out of bed and nearly slips on his shirt but he doesn’t fall, he considers putting on something more than his boxers but he’s too tired to manage it. He doesn’t even grab his shades as he leaves his bedroom, trying to be quiet even though he crashes into the door because fuck, he forgot he locked it.

The living room is too dark to see anything but isn’t it always? He can hear Safari Man’s too quick heartbeat and too slow breathing from the couch and Frank has no fucking clue what they’re going to do with the guy. He wonders if Kohe’s getting fed up of their ‘house guest’ and he wonders if Safari Man wants to leave yet, to get back to his friends.

He pushes open Kohe’s door as quietly as he can even though he knows Kohe isn’t asleep, it’s too early. The room is a blob of darkness with a blob of light in the middle and Frank can’t make out details but he doesn’t need to, he knows Kohe’s on the bed with his back to the wall and his laptop perched on a pillow. Kohe got the thing a few weeks ago and it was probably the most expensive thing in their apartment, not that Frank minds.

Kohe doesn’t look up from his game when Frank climbs onto the bed and just shifts his arm so Frank can find a nice spot on his lap. They don’t speak, Kohe keeps tapping away at whatever keys makes his character move and Frank breathes in the scent of cheap laundry soap and vanilla body wash and smoky cigarettes. He thinks the smell of smoke, cigarette smoke, should probably make him cringe or even mad but it doesn’t.

He could lie and say the smell reminded him of Kohe more now, he could lie and say he didn’t even think about Chin Chin when the scent practically coated his lungs. Frank breathes deep and swallows hard, he hates Chin Chin, more than he’s hated weebs or kids on the internet or any of the cancerous shit that went down on the internet on a whole. He hates Chin Chin with every breath he takes, Frank hates Chin Chin with more emotion than he thinks a person should be able to express but…

He, Chin Chin treated him good, that’s the fucking worst part about it. Even knowing he was being used, even knowing Chin Chin never gave a fuck about him, even knowing Chin Chin tried to drain him dry of chromosomes. Even when common sense tells him he should do nothing but hate Chin Chin for all this bullshit, even then, he doesn’t.

Frank doesn’t think he could ever stop loving Chin Chin, not completely, and it’s a different type of love than what he feels for Kohe, of fucking course it is. He’s _obsessed_ with the Dark God he met in a ruined realm, he compares everything in his life to Chin Chin, he keeps thinking about him and wishing he’d just been good enough to be taken from the battlefield. He **_knows_** it’s not right, he knows it’s fucking stupid and borderline crazy but he can’t stop himself.

“Franku,” Kohe hums when Frank presses his face hard against soft thighs and there’s a hand in his hair, petting him. Frank grabs at the hand and starts tracing over the scars, he runs his fingers over the deep cut on the palm and he rubs the pad of his thumb over the scars criss crossing the back of Kohe’s hand.

He counts them in his head, counts them over and over until the numbers jumble together but he keeps tracing them all. He knows how Kohe got the thickest scar and he knows about some of the others but he doesn’t know about them all, he lets his fingers glide along the scarred forearm before letting go. Kohe’s hands are scarred up, he’s got parts of his hand missing, he’s lived through some shit and has all the physical proof right there on him. Frank doesn’t.

All Frank has are cursed eyes and pale scars on his face that he covers up to stop himself from making them worse.

He breathes in, breathes out, and lets a hand creep under Kohe’s tank top across his stomach. There are more marks there, stretch marks from growing too fast and Frank loves the way they feel, the texture of them is different from the scars. He shifts around so he’s not in Kohe’s way but can press his lips to those marks, he likes kissing them because they feel nice.

Sometimes he thinks these are better indicators of a life lived than the scarred up hands-arms and Frank knows Chin Chin knew exactly what he was doing when he gave Frank this flawless body.


	6. Don't look at me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She's not his servant and he's not her God.  
> Frank is his servant and Chin Chin is a God.  
> Chin Chin is an asshole and he's also a God.

[He should stop, he should run, maybe stop pretending to be human in this realm and go back to his own. The disguise is weak, faltering sometimes, too rigid at others, he knows he should leave before it all falls apart.](http://vocaroo.com/i/s0YXSavpawbW)

“You’re not coming here.”

He’s listening to her again but she knows this time, they’re not even in the apartment because she thought he needed to get out more. He feels his lips quirk up before he makes them drop back down to a neutral expression, he doesn’t need her to know he can hear her brother’s end of the conversation too.

“Fuck what dad said, you’re not staying with me,” IG argues with her brother who wants to spend the night so he can go to some concert. He has no idea which it is, he hadn’t even known IG had a brother much less two and he never would have guessed she was one third of a triplet. She told him she had pictures of all three of them which he couldn’t see, she told him Oliver and Sebastian were the reasons her nose is crooked and he could only feel it.

He doesn’t know how to feel about it, being so blind. He barely remembers what sight was like, his own sight with colours and depth and contrast and _not_ the shadowed, greyscale version he gets from his servants… ** _got_** from his servants. He feels a sigh in his throat and swallows it down because he isn’t pathetic, he’s weak but not pitiful and sighing here would be pitiful.

He knows he’s floundering now that he’s alone in this realm, he knows he’s too weak to keep staying here when Francis of the Filth could find him if he just looked. Chin Chin is glad he had the foresight to get rid of Safari Man before he fell, the only one that could pick him out on sight and sic the dogs on him. Now he has more leeway, now he can hide with all the fucking hipsters in New York and avoid all peace^lords too.

For fucks sake he could probably hide in this realm for the next thousand chromosomes without anyone realising because of all the fucking hipsters. Even when his disguise slips and he has red cat’s eyes people just think he’s wearing contacts, when his teeth are too sharp they don’t bat an eye. He’s almost sure he could go walking down the road in his actual form and not a single person would give a rat’s ass.

“Call Oliver, he’ll be too stoned to care when you’re fucking some chick on his couch.”

Chin Chin wonders if everyone in this family has such a high libido; he hears IG fucking various people nearly every weekend. Sometimes she comes home smelling like sweat and sex, it sticks to her skin better than her perfumes and it makes him angry, and horny, god does it make him horny. He tries to remember if he ever felt this way about the Fake but knows he didn’t, Fake was convenient, he was a pawn. He’d never felt anything but possessive over the Fake, he still doesn’t feel anything but rage and anger at the little faggot who got his hooks in Chin Chin’s servant.

Jealousy? Maybe, but only for the weapon he lost, not real emotion. He cares less about the Fake than he does about IG which is…stupid.

“Bye Sebastian, no, **_goodbye_** ,” IG snaps and hits the table hard enough to make her bag fall and he catches it by the strap before it can hit the ground. She’s too mad to wonder how he knew it was even falling, he has an excuse, he always does but he doesn’t even get to use it which is disappointing. He likes seeing what she’ll believe whole sale and what she convinces herself is real and even what he has to really finesse to change her mind.

She notices the small things, which is different from what most people do but the small things are the better tells. She noticed his red eyes that first night on the roof, he hadn’t even realised they were red, she’d noticed the blood seeping through the bandages into his sweat shirt and he’d had to lie about spilling jam on his clothes. She even hears the growl in his voice when the wound acts up too much, she always steers the conversation to something stupid and subtly gets him alcohol; she does it so smoothly he isn’t sure he would’ve noticed if he was actually human.

Even the hissing in his veins dies down around her and it’s completely involuntary, his heart rate speeds up but he feels so calm when he’s close to her. When he can get a lungful of her scent or when he can casually brush against her, it’s like a bump of coke that makes him want to snatch her up and eat her out. He knows what she’d sound like, he’s intimate with those gasps and groans and shouts, he knows the dip in her voice when she’s desperate to cum-

“Do you have siblings?” she asks suddenly, or maybe not that suddenly and he jerks up. Her heart is fast, beating out an aggressive rhythm and her breath is sharp and forceful, she’s very mad but thankfully not at him. Or, hmm, that could be fun too. Having her shouting at him, snarling and growling at him for betrayal and lies and deceit; he’s heard “ _lovers’ spats_ ” before, the Fake even showed up what one was like up close.

He could even pull on another disguise, fuck her while she was mad at him, get to see both sides of her aggression; as the focus of her hate and the rebound. It could be very fun, something he might even have to try, then he could make up with her. He could feign regret, pretend he didn’t think he had any other choice, that he’s so fucking sorry he ever hurt her and could she ever forgive him?

“No, only child,” he answers, tilting his head when she leans forward, he can hear her skin rubbing against the plastic table and know she’s leaning on her crossed arms towards him. He hears her hair falling over her shoulders because she left it loose today and her perfume is stronger now that she’s closer; bubble gum.

“You look like one, Sebastian would like you, Oliver’d probably call you a hipster fuck,” she comments flippantly and he wonders where she’s going with this, if she’s going anywhere. She does this sometimes, when she’s got too many things on her mind and just picks something completely unrelated to ramble about. He’s heard her talk for hours and hours with friends about what colours look best on dark skin without actually naming a colour. He’d never been more confused in his life and it made him feel like an idiot, he doesn’t know why that was a good thing.

“I **_am_** a hipster fuck,” he points out when she rocks back into her seat and honestly he has no idea why she brought him to this…coffee place. He doesn’t think it’s Starbucks because he doesn’t hear people asking for venti shit but the smell of coffee is so strong he thinks he might be a little buzzed on it. He wonders if she comes here often but he doesn’t think so, the smell would cling to her clothes at least and he doesn’t ever remember the almost nauseating scent of caffeine following her.

He thinks about asking her why they’re there but he stops himself, he barely stops to people watch anymore and he gets even less time with her. He can’t remember the last time he sat back in some corner and let all the stimulus wash over him like a tsunami, dragging him under and keeping him there. It’s different now because there’s less stimulus and it’s all quieter and it’s all blunter around the edges but he still enjoys it.

Isabella shifts in her seat again and her hat slips a little and he thinks he likes it better now because he has company that doesn’t annoy him to death. He hears the barista hiss as she burns herself, he smells vodka and strawberries on a man’s breath, the plastic table top feels cheap under his hands and he wants to taste the bubble gum lip gloss smeared on her mouth. He breathes deep and swallows down the nicotine taste coating the back of his throat from his morning smoke. A person outside the shop drops their coffee and it spills all over the sidewalk, over their shoes but doesn’t even make a splash on his desensitised nose.

“Why are you still here?” IG asks so suddenly he’s caught off guard by it, he has to reel himself back in and drag his nose away from her bubble gum lips. He cocks his head and considers her question because it’s so strange, _she_ invited **_him_** out. Did she think he’d get up and leave without saying anything or that he would have left before now? He’s confused by her question, what did she expect from their outing?

“The woman behind us has been staring at you for the last twenty minutes, the barista flirted with you and left her number on my cup, even the other hipster dude in the corner’s been looking at you. Why. Are. You. Still. Here?” and she punctuates every word carefully. She sounds shocked, genuinely shocked, and a little disappointed but not enough to keep her quiet, she wants to make sure he knows about all the available options. Like he’d give to fucks about any of them.

None of them are Isabella Gwen, they don’t smell right, they don’t sound right and they sure as fuck won’t feel right. He wants lean muscle under soft skin, he wants lips curved in an amused smirk when he kisses them, he wants to feel the weight of her against him when he holds her up against a wall and fucks her. He doesn’t want any of these people with their slow eyes and heavy tongues, he doesn’t want someone who’d ignore all the little hints because the bigger ones were flashy.

“Because you’re still using their wifi?” he suggests, smiling when she shoves her phone in her pocket. He wonders if she was taking selfies for Instagram and he wonders if she’s ever got him in any of the backgrounds, he doesn’t exactly know what a selfie would sound like since all this technology is near silent. He wonders why she even brought her heavy laptop along if she didn’t plan on doing any work here.

“But are they cute? How’s my hair?” he teases her with a smile that’s almost soft, glancing in the direction of her face and knows he misses. He always does and half the time it’s even on purpose; he can tell where her face is based on her voice but these eyes don’t focus on anything. He knows it disconcerts, his blank gaze, and it’s why he leaves the stupid tinted glasses at home most days because he loves the reactions.

IG snorts and reaches across the table to push his shoulder, almost hitting her cold cup of coffee. He really has no idea why she brought him here other than to hang out, she got a coffee that she drank half of and now she’s playing around on her phone and arguing with her brother. He doesn’t understand her, she never tries to fill up the space with things; questions, smokes, jokes, not even small talk, it’s always him.

He’s the one asking her questions about her classes and her friends and her dates with a sour taste on his tongue. He makes all the charming blind jokes he can think of and all the bad, almost pick up lines he hears when he goes wandering. He even shares his flavoured smokes with her even though they’re a bitch to get; he lets her lead her around when they’re in public so he doesn’t have to use the cane.

He’s…obsessed and possessed, or maybe he’s doing the possessing.

“You look like shit,” she answers and he’d almost believe her if not for her heart, she’s good at lying and he wants to know about that too. He wants to know how good she is, if she can spot lies as easily as she tells them.

“But, okay, you don’t like it here, it’s too noisy and I can see you scrunch up your nose whenever they start a new pot. You could’ve asked to leave,” she explains. He blinks at her, chews over her words and oh. Well at least she didn’t think he’d just get up and leave her which is good but she’s more perceptive than he realised, she really does linger on all the little details which is a problem but doesn’t feel like one.

And there’s also the little part where she tried to use attraction to distract him, or cover up? He isn’t sure but it’s interesting as fuck and explains a few things and complicates a few others.

“It isn’t that bad but we can leave if you want,” he says with a shrug as if it doesn’t matter but it does, it really does. She’s doing what every other servant of his has ever done, put him before themselves only he’s never given her any reason to do that. He’s not an all powerful entity coming to her with promises of riches and fame and power, he’s just her weird, blind neighbour with the pretty face.

“Let’s go to Josie’s, happy hour starts at three,” IG tells him and gets up without waiting for his answer, she really does know him. He shoulders her bag and she holds out her arm for him. They’re back out into the crisp cold and he’s glad she’s too busy fussing with a scarf to notice how much he’s pressed up against her. At least that’s what she lets him think.

* * *

The room’s dark, damp, dank, all the other words starting with d. Frank wonders when they’ll come back down and start asking actual questions because his hands are slowly going numb and his legs ache. He wonders when Chin Chin will get here and how much blood there’ll be because there’s always blood.

He breathes deep, as deep as the rope around his chest lets him, and tries to remember how many turns the hallway had or even which floor he’s on. Frank thinks he’s underground based on the cold, underground feeling but it could be a trick, the crumbly dirt under his bare feet could be a trick and the sharp plant smell could be fake. He thinks it is, they could have him up on the top floor of whatever shit show building he’s in and these are all props to fuck him up. If he got out, he’d try to go up and he’d get caught, or he might actually be underground and he’d get caught trying to go down.

“Fuckers,” he snorts because they’re smart, smart enough to snatch him when he’s not glued to Chin Chin’s side and smart enough to blind fold on the way over so he can’t even figure out which section of the realm he’s in. Chin Chin told him this realm was built up on an old one, more industrial now and had different sections but each had their own hiding places. Frank doesn’t doubt he’s in one now, he could be in apartment right next door to where Chin Chin put him for all he knows.

He doesn’t even know who they are, they didn’t say anything when they grabbed him and they didn’t say anything when they dumped him here. Not a word when they wrapped the rope around his waist and to the back of the chair, not when they made the knots nice and tight on his wrists, and sure as fuck not when they looped the scratchy as fuck rope around his neck like a fucking noose. The fucking thing might as well be a noose too because it’s not just around his neck, it’s down his back and wrapped around his wrists too so if he tries anything he’s choking himself.

And because they like overkill, whoever they are, they’ve got more rope around his chest where he’s pretty sure he’s got a broken rib or at least some bruising. He hopes Chin Chin makes it slow when he gets here, because he will, Frank knows he will.

“Fuck all you cocksuckers,” he breathes when his ribs acts up from breathing too deep. Frank knows they’re waiting him out, waiting until he starts begging to get out of the dark or to get the ropes off or to just kill him because it’s better than being left there. He knows it’s a matter of out waiting _them_ , they’re the ones on a clock here because they can’t know when Chin Chin will get to them and they don’t know how long it’ll take to break him. Frank bets they’ll send someone over to him in a few minutes, maybe they’ll start with some offers or negotiations.

Or they’ll start with a beating, prove they aren’t afraid to make him piss blood and then they’ll ask their questions. He isn’t sure whether he’d prefer the beating or the lip service approach because both will end with him getting his ass whopped but the latter’s definitely more annoying.

He’s wrong though, they don’t start with a beating and they don’t try to talk him into spilling his guts, there’s no talking and it’s nearly literal.

Frank doesn’t hear the person behind him until they’re pressing the gun to his temple and their fingers are curling in his hair. He doesn’t hear what they’re saying because his entire world’s narrowed down to the warm metal pressed against his skin and the reek of gunpowder in his nose. The fingers in his hair pull tight until it’s nearly painful but not there yet and he’s licking his lips because he’s so fucked up, he’s so fucked and he’s so fucked up. Whoever the fuck kidnapped him is holding a gun to his head and saying some shit and instead of listening to them, he’s squirming in his seat because he’s hard.

“Francis of the filth,” the scratchy voice finishes and Frank has no idea what they said, what they want and he doesn’t think they’ll repeat if he asks. They’re pulling his head back, straining his neck with how far back they want him to go and it isn’t even doing anything to calm the sudden erection in his pants. Is the worse part him not knowing whether danger turning him on is all him or something Chin Chin trained into him, or is the worse part wanting them to press the gun against his lips?

“Tell us,” the scratchy voice demands and…what?

“I’m not Francis of the Filth,” he gasps, breathing hard through his nose because he knows, he knows there’s someone out there that looks like him and is almost exactly him. He knows that “Francis” is the one Chin Chin visits for chromosomes every thousand chromosomes because Chin Chin told him so but he’s never seen the guy. He doesn’t think Francis even knows he exists and somehow this fucker mistakes Frank for Francis?

“What is Chin Chin going to do to Francis of the Filth,” they repeat, rounding off each word with another shove of the gun against his temple and he swallows hard enough to drag the rope over his skin. So maybe this is one of _that_ Frank’s friends or someone who cares what happens to him at least but this Frank can’t give less of a shit.

He knows what Chin Chin’s told him, Francis of the filth has been slacking on sacrifices and he’s been disrespectful and isn’t worth keeping around anymore. Frank doesn’t care, he couldn’t give a flying shit what his double’s been doing but Chin Chin does and he tries to care because of that. Doesn’t mean he knows what Chin Chin’s planning, he only knows what his Lord tells him and lets him know.

“I ain’t his bitch, bruh, he doesn’t tell me shit,” he…lies? It feels like a lie even though he knows it isn’t, he doesn’t know why it feels like a lie all sour and hot on his tongue. The person presses the gun harder against his head and he wonders what they fired it at last because the barrel isn’t burning but it ain’t cold either. He wonders what it would feel like to have a bullet ripping through flesh all the way to the bone, breaking the bone even.

 “You have his eyes,” the person hisses and in their scratchy voice the words are nearly unintelligible. Frank breathes as deep as he can again and tries tugging his head back down and gets the gun pressed against his cheek instead, shoving against his teeth painfully and he feels the inside of his cheek cut against a broken tooth. The blood in his mouth isn’t copper, hasn’t been rusty for hundreds of chromosomes now and he wonders what caused the silver taste.

“He fucks you,” the person growls, yanking hard on his hair and the rope scratches against his throat painfully. He coughs a little and feels some blood dribble from the corner of his mouth, he wonders how much more there’ll be by the time this asshole’s done.

“You’re his servant.”

And the gun is against his lips and Frank stops himself from opening his mouth. He wants to, fuck does he want to, but he stops himself. He could fucking die here and now is not the time to get all horny and deep throat the thing that’ll be blowing his brains out soon. Frank’s about to say something about sex toys and dirty little secrets when he hears it, the faintest sound of a realm being ripped into.

He feels the breath catch in his throat as he hears the steady heartbeat he knows better than his own and the breath shudders out of him when the scent of blood hits him. Chin Chin is here and he’s working his way through whoever the fuck is here, Frank can smell the thick, blood scent getting richer and richer as Chin Chin creeps closer and closer.

He forgets the gun in his face and he forgets the blood in his mouth and he forgets the hand in his hair. Frank forgets everything about where he is as he tries his fucking best to track his God through the building and he really was on one of the top floors because he can hear that heartbeat coming up. He doesn’t hear the creatures getting torn apart, getting their throats torn out or being strangled by too many hands.

Frank can’t even hear their blood gushing out of them, not even splashing on the ground or against the walls but he can smell it, fuck can he smell it. The blood is sour, stale, almost spoilt and what the fuck are these things? He wonders if zombies exist, or vampires and thinks nah, the omniverse is full of weirder shit and he doesn’t think either of those would have shit with Chin Chin.

The one inside with him freezes and Frank knows it hears Chin Chin too, he knows it thought it had more time with him but time ran the fuck out. Now it has a choice to make, either use him like a bargaining chip or get the fuck out now, it chooses to run but it hesitates a second too long. The stale blood smell hits first, hits him like a wall and Frank’s reeling from the scent but he can still pick out cinnamon underneath it.

“O Chin Chin.”  

He stares around blindly, twisting against the rope, rubbing the skin raw trying to see even though the fucking room’s still pitch black. He wants to see Chin Chin stalking across the room on all fours, animalistic, he wants to see the slow, dark smirk curl across his lips, Frank wants to see too many teeth in a smile that’s everything but friendly. Humans smiled, animals showed their teeth and attacked.

“O Chin Chin ga daisuki.”

Again, Frank doesn’t hear the thing being killed, no breaking bones or stolen organs, not even a throat being crushed. There’s no sound, not a single one, until he hears Chin Chin’s footsteps again and this time they squelch liquid and wet. He’s walking in the creature’s bad smelling blood and Frank’s vibrantly reminded of his hard cock because even if the blood is stale, Chin Chin’s bound to be covered in it and there’s nothing sexier than Chin Chin covered in guts and gore.

“Mine,” Chin Chin purrs, stopping right in front of Frank and he keeps straining against the rope. He feels the skin of his wrists rub away until his hands are bloody and he tries to throw himself against the rope around his chest even though his rib protests like a mother fucker. He wants to shove his face into the crook of his God’s neck, breathe in the stale blood and cinnamon smell mixing together. He wants to rub his cock up against a hard stomach until he cums hot and sticky, then he wants to do it again.

“Ore wa ochinchin ga daisuki nandayo,” Chin Chin hums contemplatively and Frank doesn’t need to pick apart the sounds anymore, he understands exactly what his Dark God is saying. He understands so he’s not surprised when Chin Chin crawls into his lap, he’s not shocked when cold hands rip away the rope over his chest or the one between his neck and wrists. He tries to stifle a gasp and fails when Chin Chin’s nose glides along his jaw, presses behind his ear and back down to the hollow of his throat.

Once upon a time he thought Chin Chin was marking him, now he knows he was Chin Chin’s from the second he took the Dark God’s food. He knows Chin Chin’s breathing in his scent, nosing along his jaw to make sure Frank doesn’t smell like anyone but himself because a new lingering scent would need more carnage to wash away. Frank can’t see but he can feel the slick blood smearing along his jaw and he knows Chin Chin’s face is caked in dried blood, not his own, never his own.

“ _Open your mouth_.”

Frank’s jaw falls open so fast it cracks and the sound is deafening in the silent room.

* * *

 

I look at him, my servant with my eyes, and I see the perfect pawn. He thinks someone took him, he thinks they want information from him and he’s willing to take a beating for it. I cock my head and stare at him through a shade’s eyes, a shadow I gave just enough sentience to follow the script I made for it.

The Shade is bleeding out on the ground but my eyes are fixed on us, follows the curl of my fingers in the Fakes hair, zeroes in on the twist of my wrist as I bring up the gun. I like the way Fake’s legs tense against the rope, strain against it but not to get away, no probably to buck up against my ass. I shove my nose against him and breathe deep to stop the slow smile, I breathe in the corruption in his blood and the chromosomes and it’s like honeyed wine.

Sharp and slow and sweet, he smells delicious and I want him in my mouth. I want to taste the chromosomes in his blood, I want his blood thick and hot in my mouth because he’s mine and I can have him however the fuck I want. Shadow rolls over so the field of vision is better when I bring the gun up, sliding it along Fake’s ribs and over a nipple.

“ _Open your mouth_ ,” I tell him and his jaw cracks with how eager he is to comply. I do smile then, let him feel it against the skin of his neck as I slowly feed the barrel of the gun into his mouth like I would my cock. I wonder if he knows the bullet is chambered, ready to go and ready to blow his fucking brains out if I want. Well, he’s always at risk around me, I don’t need a gun to kill him but that he knows, he’s seen it enough times and thinks he smelt it this time.

The shadows don’t make a sound but they as fuck bleed and for once it’s useful. What would my precious, little Fake do if he knew I created Shade and the shadows to kidnap him and demand answers I know he wouldn’t have? Would he even bat an eye or would he write it off as me needing to test him? He’s a stupid fuck when he’s ready, worse than the shadows, because he actually thinks I care about him as if he’s more than another piece on the board.

I feel the tip hit the back of the Fake’s throat and I cock the gun to be an asshole mostly. I can feel every pulse of blood in Fake’s blood, I can hear every galloping heart beat and at this point I wouldn’t even need hearing as sensitive as my own. But all of those fade to the background in comparison to the smells; arousal and sweat and blood and anger and desperation. I breathe in deep, let it all coalesce until I can almost taste them on my tongue and I almost want to suck Fake’s dick.

I pull the gun back instead, only partway and listen to the greedy gasp of breath through his nose. I push it back in and hear the wet squelch of him swallowing around it, hear his tongue moving slickly over the smooth metal as he treats it exactly like a dick. I wonder if he’s ever done this before or if this is just another facet of his addiction to danger, it’s not hard to understand why he popped a boner though; I’ve trained him perfectly.

“ _Franku_ ,” I croon to him, grinding my hips down on his erection and manifesting another hand inside his pants but not his underwear. I palm his erection and can feel the damp spot from his precum and I’m tempted to climb off of him so I can swallow his cock as well as he’s swallowing the gun. I stop myself though because it’s not part of the show, not part of the play I’m putting on just for him.

“ _Good boy Franku, you didn’t tell them anything_ ,” I praise him even though there never was anyone to tell and even though he didn’t know anything worth telling. I like to stroke his ego, it also produces the sweetest results, like the guttural noise he makes around the gun barrel.

The Shade pushes itself to its feet and now I can see the line of drool down Fake’s face, see the shine of the spit on his chin even though there isn’t any light to cast one. I like how I look on him, perched in his lap with my legs on either side of his hips just so, one hand busy fucking his mouth with a loaded gun and the other using the severed rope like a leash to pull his head back.

I grind down again, move my hips in circles and speed up with the gun, pretending it is my cock and make Fake choke on it. The sputtering and gagging sounds beautiful, the primary need behind the lust, the need to breathe, the fight to survive always sounds better than any voice in orgasm. And I should know, I’ve been around too long not to.

“ _Cum for me Franku_ ,” I whisper even though he isn’t close, not by his own standards at least but I want him to take the edge off. I want him to be ready to go for hours and hours because I’m not untying him until I’m bored. His hips buck, or try their best, and I hear the soft screech of bone against metal when he bites the barrel too hard. I hear his heart skip a beat, double, skip, double, then it starts racing like horses on the last lap.

“ _Be a **good** boy_ ,” I taunt him and he’s cumming in his pants. The scent of cum mixes with the lust and arousal and the only thing I’d want more would be his blood but good things can wait. Fake’s cumming in his pants from getting throat fucked by a gun, and Fake thinks he’s been kidnapped by less than human creatures, and Fake thinks Chin Chin saved him.

“ _Such a good boy_ ,” I murmur because he’s still coming down and he’ll stay somewhere near here for the next few hours. There are so many things he thinks he knows, so many good things, and it’s sad how many of the ‘good things’ are manufactured and fake just like him.

I don’t wait for him to finish panting in my face, soft puffs of breath hot and steamy. I drag the gun out of his mouth, bring it around and pull the trigger in one smooth move. Shade jerks back with the impact and its blood splatters everywhere but that’s fine, the eyes are intact and I can always make another Shadow.

I turn back to Fake with a devious smirk and think about how I’ve already got the best shadow.

“ _Double tap_ ,” I explain with a shrug and distract him with a kiss deep enough to make him forget his own name, not that he has one. He mirrors me perfectly without leading and like I said, the perfect shadow.


	7. Devil's in the Details

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mirrored, mirrored, on this wall, showing the rise and the fall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> happy birth to me. here's my present to myself. peace.

[She’s never been in Dick’s apartment and she doesn’t realise that until she’s at his door with her hand raised to knock](http://vocaroo.com/i/s0Iw8Zs9pCri). She-she just need some space from her brothers, both of them are passed on out in her apartment, Bastian on the couch, Oliver in the bed and she just needs some space.

Isabella thinks Dick is home, probably, she’s heard some shuffling around and something loud thumping on the ceiling so he’s probably home but she isn’t sure. He’s the closest she has to a quiet place right now, she’d go out on the roof but the wind is sharp and she doesn’t want to sit in the stairwell. She thinks she want to talk too but she isn’t sure and, well.

She knocks loud enough to hurt her knuckles and waits a few seconds before knocking again. She knows Dick has some pretty sharp ears, scary sharp, and sometimes she thinks he can hear her in her apartment a whole floor below but she knows that’s impossible. Still, she knocks again and her knuckles are smarting now and she’s just on edge, she needs him to come to the door **_now_**.

“I’m sorry, I just-” is all she gets out before her words stick and die in her throat. There’s a tickle of something in her mouth, a shout maybe, and her neck flushes out with instant anxiety as she looks at him. There’s blood, blood smeared on him and his, his, his.

“Can you come back?” Dick asks and IG stares at his lips, the way they pull around the splits and dried blood, the tremble in his bottom lip. She stares at the messy hair that’s stiff in some places, soft in others, but sticking up like someone was running their hands through it and she feels something white hot in her stomach. She knows, she _knows_ no one ran their hands through Dick’s hair, no one but himself but the burning in her stomach is still there and she can’t stop it.

“What the fuck happened to you?” and the words tumble out of her mouth, she’s watching him with wide eyes, ready to grab him if he starts to sway. She doesn’t think he knows how bad he looks, not the split lips with the trickle of blood at the corner of his mouth, not the black eye or cut on his cheekbone. Someone punched him in the face probably, maybe was going for his jaw but missed or he ducked.

“Who the fuck did this?” she mutters because who the fuck goes around beating up blind people? That’s ten different shades of disgusting and she’s willing to beat them five shades of senseless and stupid, each.

Dick’s leaning against the door, resting his weight on it and it’s probably the only thing keeping him upright. When he lifts a hand to grab the edge of the door, she sees bruised but not split knuckles and at least he knows how to throw a punch even if he looks like he collected more than a few. She wonders where he goes and what he does that coming home like this isn’t weird, she can tell it isn’t weird for him because he’s trying to hide. If this was strange, he would’ve let her in already and let her fuss over him while she tried to convince him to make a formal report to the cops.

She looks him over and he’s favouring his right side, his right shoulder is dipped and the angle of his body makes it so she can’t reach for that side without him stopping her. She doesn’t think he’d hurt her but she doesn’t try to touch, she’ll take whatever he gives her and right now all she wants is a place to sit down and breathe. Or maybe to sit him down and clean up all the scrapes and cuts and make sure he doesn’t have a fucking concussion.

He’s staring past her shoulder, not even trying to find her face and that’s when she gets how out of it he is. He’s looking at the hall behind her and he’s blinking slow and careful like a cat that’s trying to decide its next move. His eyes glint red for a second, just a second, before they’re nothing but warm brown again and he’s standing aside to let her in even though his mouth is twisted in a grimace. She isn’t sure whether it’s from pain or from her being there, she thinks it might be some mix of the two but she can’t be sure.

She can’t be sure about so many things when it comes to him. She doesn’t know what he does for a living, she thinks he runs drugs or guns or something else illegal but he doesn’t act like he does. She doesn’t know his name, he told her Dick but he doesn’t always answer when she calls him and sometimes he tilts his head all confused like he doesn’t know why she’s saying it. Sometimes she catches him tilting his head to the side, eyes closed tight, lips mouthing words and she doesn’t know if he’s trying to remember something or listening to someone’s conversation.

“Ran into someone,” he tells her like she’ll accept that and she isn’t sure whether he’s just trying to brush off his ass whopping or genuinely believes she’ll accept it and move on. He’s…an arrogant fucker, he always smiles like he knows more than anyone else in the room but he’s always, always surprised when those people do something for him. She takes two steps into the room before stopping, he always visits her or they go out and now she thinks she knows why.

The apartment is empty, almost a haunting kind of empty because she’d never really thought what his place would look like but she’d had a few expectations. There’s a couch, a lumpy shape in the dark room, and a few wooden chairs leaning to one side or the other around the room. She can’t really make out anything because the lights aren’t on because duh, blind guy, but there’s enough light from the kitchen window for her to make out some things. She thought the walls would be bare but there are things hanging on them, each wall has one, and she doesn’t think they’re pictures.

“My brothers are spending the weekend with me,” she answers because she knows he isn’t going to explain himself, at least not now. He nods vaguely, closing the door and leaning against it as soon as he can and there’s something there too, she shifts to the side and…it’s a mirror. A floor length mirror on the back of the door, she looks at what’s most likely the bedroom door and wonders if there’s another mirror there.

Why would a blind man need a mirror? She doesn’t know, she can’t figure it out. Dick never takes selfies, he doesn’t have a phone as far as she knows and he even refuses to take selfies with her. He always says it’s pointless because he can’t see them but he has a mirror? Mirrors actually, at least five in the living room alone and who knew how many more in the bedroom.

“I tell you we’re triplets? Sebastian, Oliver and…Isabella.”

She stumbles over the name, she _still_ stumbles over the name, **_her_** name. She’s so used to-to Sebastian and Oliver and _not_ Isabella; identical triplets meant a lot of people referred to them as a collective instead of individuals. Even now, even as adults with their very separate lives and barely seeing each other they don’t react when they hear their singular names. Sebastian still tilts his head when his boyfriend calls him Bastian and Oliver doesn’t even look up at Politikz and Isabella, Isabella answers to IG before her name.

Dick doesn’t seem to notice the pause, he’s got his head tilted back and is staring at up at the ceiling. She wonders if he can see at all, she’s never asked; he wears tinted shades sometimes and he uses a cane sometimes but not all the time and she knows him not needing them all the time doesn’t mean he does not need them. She never knows how to ask questions like that, she never knows what sounds offensive and she’s terrified of fucking up.

“Sebastian and Oliver are five minutes apart, Sebastian is older though. I’m a whole twenty minutes younger than them,” she continues but she’s not really paying attention to what she’s saying anymore. She’s too busy staring at the hand he raises to his jaw, too busy staring at the bruise on the underside of his chin and the one around his neck to really focus on her own words.

He’s handsome, of course he is, it’s what caught her eye in the first place. He’s got cheekbones she would die for and lips that set into the perfect pout, they’re even a pretty shade of pink she can only get when she uses nude mattes. Sometimes he smiles and she feels her breath catch in her throat, other times he grins slow and playful and she wants to crawl into his lap. She still doesn’t know what he thinks of her, if he’s even in to chicks or anyone at all, she’s never seen him with any other than herself before.

The fingers rubbing slow circles into his jaw move down and curl around his throat, slotting into place over the vaguely finger shaped bruises and IG’s flat out staring now. He’s still looking at the ceiling but she thinks his eyes are closed, she sees herself in the mirror’s reflexion and only her purple hair stands out in it. She takes a half step to the side and still nothing but purple.

He’s holding his own throat and if she didn’t know better, she’d swear he was choking himself out. His fingers flex and the skin dips under the pressure and she can see his Adam’s apple bob with gulp after gulp of air but he’s not choking, his expression is still too relaxed for that. His lips are quirked in an almost smile that she can make out by the light slanting across his face and his nostrils flare with a sharp breath.

“I…you should go,” he tells her but he doesn’t move a muscle, he stays leaning against the only way out with one hand around his throat and the other flush against the mirror. He doesn’t move a muscle so she does instead, she takes the two steps back to the door until she’s right in his face and he can’t avoid her. If he tries to move, he has to brush past her, if he asks her to leave again, he has to press against her to open the door; he can’t avoid her.

“But I don’t want to go,” she…tells him, yeah tells him because she’s, she’s tired of getting half answers and him dodging questions whenever she asks him something. She’s tired of the mixed signals she gets him from, when he tilts his head at something she says or smiles at her so soft and gentle like he’s never heard something so nice before. She’s tired of being so attracted to him and doing nothing about it, she can’t remember the last time she didn’t try to hit someone up when she liked them.

“I don’t want you to go,” he admits through grit teeth and he’s still staring blankly at the ceiling and she knows it’s not because he’s blind. He always make the effort of looking in her direction when they talk, he always acknowledges her, right now he’s pretending she doesn’t exist, or exist so close to him at least and it makes her mad. Here he is saying he doesn’t want her to leave but acting like she isn’t here, this **_fucker_**.

“Then don’t make me leave.

She thinks he won’t, a muscle in his jaw is twitching, jumping and his lips are moving, mouthing words he isn’t saying.

“Fucking do something,” she hisses and she’s so close to him she doesn’t even need to tilt her head to look him full in the face. She’s close enough to hear him swallow and she’s close enough for his breath to ghost over her cheek when he exhales so sharp she thinks he was going to say something but the word died on his tongue.

“Do something, pussy,” she breathes so quiet the only reason he can hear her is because she’s so close. There’s a second, a second where she thinks he’s going to shove her away or snarl in her face or start shouting and screaming and raging. There’s a second where she sees his lips twist into something dark, a grimace maybe, and they pull away from his teeth and she thinks they look too sharp to be right.

Then the second is gone and his head isn’t titled up towards the ceiling anymore, the second is gone and he does something _beautiful_.

* * *

[Ramen Devil, Red Devil, it doesn’t matter what name he’s going by at the time, Chin Chin knows his scent; heat and burning and spice and cloying, wet rot. ](http://vocaroo.com/i/s0CouIdXw8IN)He didn’t expect the Devil to be in this town, he didn’t expect the Devil to be in this realm and it’s one of the stupider mistakes he’s made in the last few months. Taking into account him not killing the Fake when he had the chance and him not snapping the little faggot’s neck when he had the chance and him still being in this realm when he should be far, far away.

…

He made a bad choice and now he’s aching in ways he forgot it was possible to ache. He can almost feel the burning fingers wrapped around his throat, searing the flesh until it sizzled and boiled. He does feel the broken ribs every time he breathes too deeply and the sharp, incessant ache is so different from the lingering, dull throb of the stab that won’t heal that it’s almost welcome. He makes another mistake when he lets Isabella into his apartment, he knows he shouldn’t but he can’t help himself.

He wants her, he wants to feel her firm and solid and there under his hands. He needs to make sure she’s here, he always wants to make sure she’s here, especially after running into the Devil in the Kitchen. Chin Chin knows she’s exactly the kind of person RD would go after, he knows she’s beautiful and he knows she’s got enough insecurities and hang ups to tempt the most reclusive imps. He’s actually surprised none of them have ever latched onto her before but he’s glad now, he would’ve killed any of them, hunted them down and ripped them apart for feeding on her.

“Fucking do something,” she taunts him and his fingers are cold around his own neck, they temper the burning and hide the half melted flesh from her. He wants to do something, he wants to badly, he wants to wraps his hands around her neck and press his thumbs to the strong pulse point there. He wants to press his face to her hair and breathe deep, breathe in nice and deep so he smells **_her_** under her brother’s stench.

He thinks about tasting her, sucking on her tongue the way he’s wanted to for weeks, months even. He thinks about licking the drops of sweat between her breasts, he thinks about licking and sucking and biting his way down her body all the way to her cock. He swallows hard, once, twice, he wants her so much, he thinks he’s obsessed with her, addicted, in l-

“Do something, pussy,” and her breath is cool on his face, she smells like strawberry lipstick and he might regret this, this might be another mistake he’s making right now but he can’t stop himself. She’s right there, she’s giving him permission, she’s sighing against his mouth.

He doesn’t have to do anything, he’s already looking at her and all he has to do now is tilt his head up and he’s kissing her. Her lips are soft, impossibly soft, and he feels pleasure dance through his veins, feels all the good places in his brain lighting up as she sighs against his mouth. She puts a hand on his jaw and taps his cheek to make him move, she directs him until their noses aren’t in the way and she slips that hand in his bloody, sweat stiff hair.

“Please,” he mouths against her, desperate for more, he needs more. He blinks blindly at her and he wishes he had eyes to see, he wishes he brought one of his shadows with him so he could see her for once. He wants to see the crooked nose and he wants to see the pucker of her lips although feeling is nearly as good, he wants to see all the subtle, myriad emotions in her eyes. He wants to see her eyes when she looks at him.

“Fucking please,” he groans and she hears him this time, she doesn’t gasp like he expects, she slips her tongue inside his mouth instead and he feels like his brain is fuzzing out. Even the Fake fuck needed prompting to take charge, Chin Chin had to work for weeks before the little shit would do so much as kiss him without asking first. Isabella licks into his mouth and starts sucking on his tongue without so much as a warning and he’s already half hard.

She tastes like strawberries and cheap alcohol, she tastes like slow heat and desire, or maybe he’s projecting onto her. Then she gasps in his mouth, snatches the breath from his lungs and no, that’s her taste, seduction is her taste and he’s seduced. He indulges in the kiss, kisses? He lets her have control, he lets her bite his lips and shudders when her teeth graze along his tongue and imagines what it would feel like on his cock.

He feels like he’s drowning in her, she’s half hard too and he gets to smell the sweet musk up close and personal. He gets to breathes her in, the clean sweat and the thicker sex smells, he gets to rest his hands on her hips and pull her flush against him. He doesn’t have to listen from a floor above with his shirt in his mouth to keep himself quiet, he can moan against her mouth and he can rock his hips against her. He doesn’t have to stop to listen to her frantic heart beat over his own, he doesn’t have to hold his ragged breath so he can hear all the soft, mewling sounds she makes.

“Stop me,” he chokes when she pulls away. They’re both breathing hard and heavy and he can hear her swallowing hard; he almost leans in so he can press his lips to her Adam’s apple and feel it move. He almost chases her lips because he wants more, he almost uses a second pair of hands to grab her ass, he almost uses a third pair to coax her legs apart so he can lift her up.

“I don’t want you to stop,” she moans and it actually sounds pained, fuck he wants to see her face. He wants to see her half lidded eyes and swollen lips, he wants to see the slick shine of spit on her lips and he wants to see the sweat beading on her nape.

“I want to suck you off,” he blurts and thinks about her taste again.

“Please,” she begs sounding so wrecked it’s a wonder he doesn’t cum then and there. He’s dreamt about her sounding like this, heard her sound like this for men and women who’d leave in the morning and never come back. Now she’s begging him, now her voice is pitched low and breaking for him and Chin Chin doesn’t think he’ll be able to move on from her. When he regains his power, which he will, he won’t be able to leave her here, he has to take her with him and he doesn’t care how he does it.

He needs to hear every surprised noise she can make, like the gasping, high pitched one she makes when he uses too many hands to spin her around and push her against the mirror. He knows she doesn’t notice because she doesn’t say anything and he makes sure to distract her with kisses, biting kisses, soft kisses and wet kisses when he uses a second set of hands to get her pants and underwear off. He pushes up her shirt and keeps it there with a flesh and blood hand, he kisses the soft swell of her breasts, he kisses the space between them and skirts both nipples.

Sometime soon he’ll take a whole day to map out her body the way he desperately wants to, someday he’ll know exactly what she does and doesn’t like, he’ll know how to make her cum with a few perfectly placed touches. For now, he drops to his knees and coaxes her legs over his shoulders, for now he wraps his hand around her cock and breathes over the head.

“Fucking,” she breathes and he hears the soft thump of her head hitting the mirror and he wants so badly to see the long line of her throat and all the hickies from it all the way down her chest. He licks a careful line up her cock instead, he traces the veins on the underside of her dick instead, getting a feel for her and tasting her in equal turns.

She’s…musky, almost sweet and he wonders if it’s from all the sweet things she eats. She’s responsive as fuck too, she trembles when he kisses the base of her dick and makes a beautiful mewling noise when he tongues the slit. He’s barely touched her and she’s already leaking precum that he laps up as catlike as he knows how.

When he finally, finally kisses the tip of her cock, the sound she makes is fucking wrecked and he doesn’t even hesitate to swallow down the entirety of it. He feels the tip of her dick hit the back of his throat and swallows, he needs to hear her make that sound again. He swallows around her, and digs his fingers into her hips hard enough to bruise and ignores the ache from his broken ribs and forgets the constant pain of just over his heart.

He bobs his head and sucks hard, he presses his nose to the curly black hair at the base of her cock and breathes deep every time he swallows. He loves the taste of her cock in his mouth, the heft of it stretching his jaw, the feeling of it dragging over his tongue, there’s nothing he doesn’t love about it. Combined with the noises she’s making and he’s fucking gone, he’s so hard he can barely think beyond the dick in his mouth, down his throat.

Her heart beat is so loud in his head, pounding in his brain and blocking out everything except the breathy, desperate noises she’s making. He knows she’s about to cum before she does maybe, he hears the skip in her frantic heartbeat and he hears the gasping, choking noise in her throat before she’s pulling at his hair. She’s stuttering around her words, every time she tries to say something it breaks into a moan or a gasp or a shout.

“F-ah! Mmmmm,” is the closest she gets to an actual word before she’s cumming, cumming hot and salty down his throat and he swallows. He swallows and swallows and swallows because he doesn’t want to waste a drop of it, he milks her cock for all it’s worth and keeps going until she pushes his head away. They’re both breathing hard when he pulls off, when he rests one cheek against her thigh and shifts so her soft dick is smearing over the other one.

He knows he looks like a fucking mess when she glances down and makes a strangled noise in her throat. He wonders what he looks like, if his lips are red, he wonders if they’re shiny from the spit or from the flecks of cum he didn’t manage to swallow and when he licks his lips to get them, the hand in his hair tightens.

“I want you to fuck your thighs,” he rasps and he hears her hair shifting and moving as she nods, nods so hard he hears her head hit the mirror.

“Y-yes, pl-ea…yeah,” she stutters, barely coherent and he knows how she feels. He also knows he shouldn’t get this close to her, he’s already too involved with her but-but-but…

But he won’t because she’s-she’s perfect.

“You’re amazing,” he purrs and the roughness from his raw throat doesn’t even sound out of place, he just sounds fucked out and fucked up, “you’re fucking beautiful.”

* * *

 

They’ve known each other for chromosomes now, millions and billions, and RD couldn’t remember the first time they met if he tried and he has tried. Sometimes he thought it was back when he first visited Chin Chin’s realm, back before it was this thriving place full of life and retardation. Other times he thought it was when he first stumbled across the temple on the edge of the Fields of Redemption.

He snorts when he remembers that temple, the fucking thing had been huge with doorways too wide to bother pacing off. The art work on the walls had showed some gigantic monster, a black mass with an almost human face and eyes sewn shut, he’d thought it as some kind of joke. When the black mass had strolled in with loping steps that carried it halfway through the temple with two simple steps, he’d started to believe in it.

They’ve danced on the edge of each other’s territories even before they met though; Chin Chin seeking out human corruption and feeding on it, RD chasing down sins and sinners and surviving off them. There’s a subtle difference between corruption and sin but they overlap so much it’s hard for RD to keep his fingers out of Chin Chin’s business and it’s hard for Chin Chin to resist the sweet, sweet siren call. They’ve fought so many times it’s almost a game between them, to attack each other on sight, because they’re both one of the few entities that could survive an attack from each other.

“That colour really brings out your eyes, pretty baby,” RD croons, giving the woman a lazy once over, eyes clinging to the curves of her hips and breasts and ass just like the bright red dress. She’s his latest toy, he found her…somewhere, he forgets, there are so many little sinful humans in this realm it’s easy to pick them up and throw them away and no real reason to know any of them. She blushes, ducks her head and her black, black hair goes tumbling over her shoulder and he smirks.

He likes the pretty ones and there are so many pretty ones. He opens his arms wide and she sashays up to him, swinging her hips beautifully and he laughs so deep it’s almost a growl. He wraps his arms around her hips and pulls her in, presses his face against her stomach and rests his hands on her ass. She isn’t stick thin and he knows it bothers her, he likes it though, she’s beautiful to him regardless and she’s full of all kinds of hatred; wrath might be his favourite sin.

“Are you ready to get shit faced tonight?” he asks her and she makes a noise he takes as yes. He would’ve loved to show her off to Chin Chin, rub his pretty little toy in the lycra’s face and talk about how Chin Chin’s still hung up on his little wraith. He would’ve loved to have the two toys go at it, put on a show for them because even if Chin Chin can’t see, he always picks the prettiest pets even if this latest one looks like Francis of the Filth.

“I’m going to spoil you rotten tonight, pretty baby,” he promises her while he thinks about Chin Chin now, the closest thing he’d have to an ally or even friend. They’ve known each other a long time and RD might be the only one who knows where Chin Chin came from or even what his plans for the war even are. He was around when Chin Chin found his latest pawn, this Fake Frank who’s dancing around the city full of a different kind of sin than the one he can use, Red Devil was around when Chin Chin picked up a new human face.

He huffs softly and wonders how a blind god picks such lovely faces, high cheekbones and straight noses, full lips and such soft hair. Chin Chin’s always beautiful no matter what face he takes and RD isn’t afraid to wax poetic about all of them. He appreciates a good looking fucker and Chin Chin always is one; he’s good looking as a writhing mass of corruption, shadow and smoke.

Chin Chin was actually the one to start calling him Ramen Devil, a more modern name without the strict connotations of Red Devil and he wonders what name Chin Chin is using now. He wonders why the fuck Chin Chin’s bleeding into his clothes, why he’s hobbling around the city with a cane a pair of tinted glasses, why he’s speaking English like he doesn’t despise the language. He doesn’t know why the Fake fuck is dancing around with a gun runner and he doesn’t know how Chin Chin’s incapable of taking a few punches from him now when they’ve had fights that lasted full weeks.

Maybe Chin Chin’s losing power now that Francis is back but it can’t be just that, maybe he’s waiting for more sacrifices but RD doesn’t think either of those is right. He knows Chin Chin’s been stalking through his own realm as the hulking, eldritch monstrosity he first met all those billions of…time ago. He’s heard about the people trying to move in on the territory and the bodies being found, the ones strangled with their own guts, the ones torn clean in half, the bits and pieces that are found.

RD wonders if Chin Chin’s losing power or if his power is shifting and changing to adapt, after all names aren’t the only modern things they can have. He’s the devil, he’s used to making deals for human souls, he’s used to having to make impossible deals to get a taste of original sin. Nowadays all he has to do is be pretty enough, be charming enough, be rich and kind enough and he’ll be drowning in sin without lifting a finger.

“Happy anniversary, baby,” he purrs, pressing a kiss to his pet’s hip, right over the new tattoo. He likes this one, it’s a bird with a nice red breast, reminds him of the real colour hiding under this brown skin he’s wearing.

“You’re the best thing that ever happened to me,” she sighs and he smiles against her hip, against the dress. He loves this new world, it’s so easy to get what he wants and what he wants is more, more, more. He wants to stuff himself full and gorge himself on all the sin he can get his hands on.

“You know how I love you, pretty baby,” he tells her and feels a shiver run down his spine when her lust spikes through him. This new world is so _beautiful_.


	8. Red like...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> love, lust and anger.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> certain scenes are based on art created by some lovely artists and will be linked so feel free to check them out.

[The room is pitch black](http://vocaroo.com/i/s0jgHbLt1kab) and [she wonders where the fuck she is](http://vocaroo.com/i/s0g0MbBNTSJ6) before [she feels the arm over her hip](http://vocaroo.com/i/s0ZJKairVH7J). She’s so used to bringing people to her place she actually forgot what it was like to wake up in someone else’s bed with aches in all the best places but it doesn’t take long to remember and it doesn’t take long to remember whose bed she’s in. She’s in Dick’s apartment, she’s in his bed although it’s actually a mattress on the floor and he’s got his arm tight around her waist and his face pressed into her hair.

Every time he breathes she can feel it puff against her neck and she can hear him make the strangest little noises in his sleep, almost like he’s trying to say something but the words keep breaking up into nonsense. The strange thing is she’s not sure these words are in English, they don’t sound like any language she’s heard but she doesn’t really know they **_are_** half mumbled after all. There’s also the little thing where he holds her tighter every time she tries to pull away, she’s never had a one night stand where they didn’t let her go as soon as possible before and it’s nice.

She feels wanted, beyond the whole sex thing and maybe it’s a little sad that she doesn’t try as hard as hard as she can to leave. Maybe it’s a little sad that she snuggles back into his grip or maybe it’s sadder that she presses her face into the pillow and breathes as deep as she can; she doesn’t give a fuck if it’s sad though. She breathes in cinnamon and wonders if everything about this man smells like cinnamon but she doesn’t think she has a problem with it.

There are some parts of the night she’s not too clear on like when Dick held her up against the mirror and rubbed his cock against her ass and it felt like there were too many hands on her. She knows that impossible but she swears there were two hands on her ass as he fucked her thighs but there was also another hand on her cock, and one around her throat? She thinks there was a point where he was licking the cum off her thighs and she was trying to catch her breath and there was a hand stroking her cheek, another petting her hair but that’s two hands too many.

IG has no idea what to really think about half the shit that happened last night, she feels like it’s a cop out but the best cop out in the history of cop outs. Actually, it’s not even that bad a cop out and probably doesn’t even count as one, probably shouldn’t so why does she feel like it does?

She doesn’t mean the sex, definitely not the sex, the sex was great. She means, she means how he avoided her questions with it, he kissed her because she wanted answers and he didn’t want to give them. He didn’t want to tell her who beat him and she knows he said he ran into someone but who the fuck could he have run into? Who even is he?

He still hasn’t given her a name, she doesn’t know how old he is, what he does, if he even has family here, is he a foreigner? He knows her name, her full name, he knows she’s a student, he’s met some of her friends, he knows about her brothers. He knows she’s real fucking depressed, he knows she uses sex like alcohol because if she has enough of it she can forget everything for a while.

She thinks he knows too much about her, he knows too many things he shouldn’t, he knows things she didn’t even tell him. The wine, she’s still hung up on the wine, how did he know? She doesn’t know anything substantial about him, she doesn’t even know how long he’s been in the apartment above her, not exactly. She remembers the neighbour before him and she remembers them moving out but she can’t ever remember him moving in, not really, just showed up one day.

She should be scared maybe, she should be suspicious maybe, she shouldn’t trust him, she should treat this like a one off and leave now before he wakes up. She could say she was a little tipsy, she could say she was keyed up because of her brothers and needed to a let off some steam, she could try the whole friends with benefits thing. She could say she just wasn’t attracted to him in _that_ way, like sure the sex was awesome but she really didn’t think they could have anything more than that.

Maybe she’s stupid, maybe she’s an idiot, maybe she’s thinking with her dick because she doesn’t want to do any of those things. She actually likes him, she wants this to be more than a one off even though she still wants answers, even though she doesn’t think she’ll get very many answers, or any answers at all.

“Fucking,” she sighs and finally rolls out of his grip, shuffles herself until she’s on the edge of the mattress and his grip. He doesn’t have an actual bed frame, she didn’t know why that seemed so normal to her, him just having a mattress made up in a corner of the room out of the way of everything else. She doesn’t know what else is in the room, it was too dark last night and it’s too dark this morning if it is morning, she thinks he’s got something taped up in front of the window.

His fingers are cool along her ribs and she’d love to fall back asleep there but she, she doesn’t have anything to do but she feels like she needs to move anyway. She feels around on the floor for clothes, her pants are probably still in the living room and her shirt is somewhere on the other side of the room. She feels something soft, something almost worn and drags it over, it’s a t-shirt and even if it isn’t huge on her, she still pulls it on because it’s better than walking around his place naked.

She feels her way to the door, groping along the wall and navigating around something. She wonders if Dick ever has to do this in a new place and automatically feels like shit because no, no, no. She finds the door after the whatever she navigated around and feels cool glass instead of wood even though she finds the door handle. She wonders if it’s another mirror and wonders what he’d need a mirror, if it was the bathroom then okay, the bathroom probably already came with one but this is so obviously something he brought with him.

Mirror aside, she opens the door and slips out into the living room that’s so bright she can only squint for a while. She leans against the door and breathes, just breathes, she feels the lingering ache in her thighs and she feels the pleasant strain along her groin and the general acheyness from exceptional sex. She can’t remember the last time she got fucked so good and she could forget all the creepy shit for the sex alone but she won’t, she doesn’t think she can.

When she can finally see again, the living room is just as empty as she thought it was last night. There’s the couch she saw, dark and just as shit as she thought, and there’s a glass coffee table with a crack in one corner. There are a few chairs around the room, in the kitchen too, and they all look fucked and she guesses some of this might be from all the thumping and bumping she’s heard. There’s a dark red curtain across the fire escape window and it blocks out most of the light but it’s not enough to block all of it and it gives the whole room a soft red glow.

A glow that reflects off the mirrors in the strangest way because two are directly facing each other and play off each other and…these aren’t mirrors. She squints at the one closest to her on the wall, it’s a little higher than her face but she can still make out what is when she backs up. It’s, well it is a mirror but there’s a painting on it, or something, she’s not sure if it’s a painting because it doesn’t look like paint exactly.

The mirror is fairly small, square and canvas sized and she guesses that’s exactly why Dick got it because there’s a…painting, yeah a painting of a person on it. [At first she thinks it’s Jesus or something because it has a halo burst around the head and the whole ‘godly’ vibe to it then she realises the glass is tinted red and Jesus doesn’t wear black](http://lotonic.tumblr.com/post/157512396944/fallen-king-gift-for-my-friend). The figure is in all black, like a skin-tight suit and she has the strangest feeling she’s seen something like this before but she has no idea where.

The painting makes her think about god though, the entire feeling of godliness and religion even though she’s sure this isn’t any kind of god she’s ever heard of. The expression on the pale face is sombre with the pulled together eyebrows and the lips pressed into a line, there’s even bags under the closest eyes that make it seem tired. She can’t understand the drawing on the eyelids though, fake eyes maybe, some kind of symbolism about seeing the unseen or whatever bullshit. The halo isn’t even a halo, it’s a ring of eyes, or at least the kind drawn onto the person’s eye lids and it looks sinister as fuck for some reason.

She reaches up to touch it, expecting matte paint or something but no, it’s smooth glass so it’s either the image was behind the glass or it was in the glass but it still reflects like a mirror. She traces the halo around the deity’s head and a line down the nose to the lips and wonders if maybe it’s a double set of glass. Maybe the image was painted onto the mirrors flat surface then another plane of perfectly clear, thin glass was put on top as a protective layer maybe, to preserve the image?

She thinks she might be right because her fingers reflect red and black and white, like the light is filtering through the colours and bouncing back. She wonders where Dick got this thing, it’s a pretty piece of work, and almost looks like the ripples at the bottom of the bust would start moving any second. She doesn’t know whether she likes the deity in the glass or not but he’s interesting at least and when she looks across the room, he’s in the other ‘mirror’ too.

[This time there’s no colour, nothing but the clean mirror and the image on top and the other piece of glass on top of that.](https://aesthediccsucc.tumblr.com/post/157383023751/uncolored) The image this time is done up in dark black lines outlined in the thinnest pieces of silver and the reflections make up the ‘colour’ here. The deity is there again, looking the other direction this time and still in his pool of water or whatever it is and he’s still sombre but it’s a completely different feeling.

The eyes are the most prominent she thinks, the way they’re closer to human eyes and looking in all different directions. There’re still arranged around the deity like a halo but they’re closer and they’re only six of them this time, three pairs. She wonders if they mean something, three apostles or followers maybe, or even past, present and future because the god looks weaker here. His head is down and it’s hard to make out the eyes drown on the eyelids and for a while she just thinks she’s wrong but no, he has no mouth.

The deity looks like he’s melting actually, like he’s fading away into nothing or sinking back into nothing. Even the arch of his back looks bent but not like it’s under a weight, more defeat and solemn acceptance here and she wonders who the fuck this is even supposed to be. She isn’t very religious, more on the agnostic side, but she’s damn sure she’s never seen a god like this before and it ain’t Satan. She traces the halo again, lightly because she doesn’t want to leave finger prints on the glass and turns to the kitchen, maybe she can make breakfast or something and nearly starts cussing.

Okay so maybe she should’ve guessed or maybe she should have noticed before but it’s early, she’s still sleep stupid and just plain didn’t notice. The ‘mirror’, the floor length one that Dick held her up against, the one he was leaning against, the one on the back of the door is the most impressive one. It’s the one that makes her realise Dick didn’t buy the paintings, he **_made_** them.

Her heart is in her throat, beating harder with every step closer to the front door and the biggest picture. She understands why she could only see her hair in the mirror last night though, purple is the only real colour in the ‘painting’ and it’s the exact shade of her hair, she really wonders how he knew what colour her hair is. She thinks she should be creeped out because he either took a picture of her and showed it to a friend so they could choose the colour or he instinctively chose the right colour.

The mirror painting is of her, Isabella Gwen, IG. The painting has her standing with her weight braced on one leg, has her dressed in her favourite high waisted skirt and big top although they’re colourless except for the purple accents. She’s smiling in the painting, lips fuller than she thinks they should be, eyes half lidded behind her glasses and knowing a way she doesn’t thinks he could ever be. The painting has her hair falling over her shoulders, cascading is the word that comes to mind but she honestly doesn’t think it could ever apply to her.

She looks at this mirror painting and sees an idealised version of herself, one that’s beautiful and confident and flawless. She wants to touch, she wants to trace the too full lips and the waves of hair, the fucking tresses the way she touched the others but she can’t. She can’t make herself do it, she sees her real reflection through the painting and sees the eyebags, the acne, the patchy beard she’ll shave when she gets home, maybe. She doesn’t look like the painting, she wants to, she’d love to because it doesn’t, it’s beautiful, but it’s not, it doesn’t take away from who she is.

The painting has the curve of her Adam’s apple and it has the broadness of her shoulders, even her crooked nose, and she thinks that’s part of what makes her feel off staring at it. She sees herself, she really does, but she knows she can’t look as good as the painting does. She feels too awkward to ever look like that and she wonders if this is how Dick sees her, if this is how he thinks she looks. She doesn’t know how to feel about that, she really doesn’t, so she does what she does best and ignores the fuck out of that shit and turns away from the mirror.

She decides to make ‘we had great sex’ breakfast with whatever he has in his kitchen and if he doesn’t have shit, she’ll head to her apartment and steal whatever left overs Sebastian and Oliver have. She notices the broken glass in the corners of the apartment but ignores it, she notices the cracked mirror on the floor but doesn’t bother with it. [She doesn’t even stop to think about how it’s the same deity again but he’s smiling this time, smirking with sharp teeth and staring with black eyes.](https://frankly-unimpressed.tumblr.com/post/157473842921/babe-chin-chin-in-3c-fffantasies)

She’s making sex breakfast and that’s all that matters, not all the eyes on her. She doesn’t even notice the way the eyes keep flittering around the room but always end up back on her, she’s got more important shit to do.

* * *

 

The temple is old, it’s always been old, even before Chin Chin officially claimed it and no one fucking knows who it belonged to before. Fak- _Frank_ , **_Frank_** always thought it belonged to Chin Chin, he never thought about things existing before Chin Chin because he never thought about anything but Chin Chin back then. He still can’t get the fucking God out of his head and he knows it’s no one’s fault but his own.

He shouldn’t be here, he really shouldn’t be here but he can’t help himself. He tries to say it’s for Safari Man, even if he’s not in the Shadow Realm with the Condemned anymore, even if he’s back with the living he’s still cursed. No one can take the curse off but Chin Chin, Pink Guy was lucky, he was able to leave because Chin Chin still needed him but he didn’t need Safari Man. If they ever want their ‘house guest’ to leave, Frank has to find Chin Chin again and get him to lift the fucking curse.

So that’s why he’s here, back in the huge temple for a Dark God he still believes in even though he shouldn’t. He’s not here because he remembers it being safe, he’s not here because he remembers how good he had it here, he’s here for Safari Man. Even if he’s by the bar drinking the fruity cocktails he loves, even if he’s dancing with pretty girls who have smiles that are just a little too sharp, even if he’s more relaxed here than he ever feels anywhere else, he’s just here for Safari Man.

No one even recognises him, although to be fair, no one really remembers what happens in this place. Some people just see the club, depending on who brought them here, all they see is the temple ‘motif’ with the rough pillars and the high ceiling with all the flashing lights and fog to cover everything else. Some of them see the cobwebs in the corners, feel the dust on the floor and don’t give a fuck either way, those are the ones wearing the masks because they know how dangerous the air here is. The hardest ones to find are the ones who see everything, the murals on the walls showing off a huge, writhing mass of a creature or maybe it’s something a little more humanoid with a charming smile and sewn shut eyes.

Frank doesn’t know which is worse, the people who see it all or the ones who don’t see a single thing, he isn’t sure which he tries to avoid more. They don’t recognise him and he doesn’t know why, he isn’t trying to hide himself, not exactly. He wears a mask because he knows about the toxins in the air, he knows why it’s called monoxide 8 or whatever the fuck Chin Chin calls this damn place. He doesn’t need the mask because he’s Chin Chin’s creature, he’s blessed or cursed or whatever the fuck to be able to survive near all the fucking corruption Chin Chin has.

He’s wearing a face mask that covers up his mouth, it has a stupid animal print on it, and he’s wearing the fake ears to match because that’s the kind of people who come here, the kind of people who wear fake animal pieces to blend in with the ones who actually have animal pieces. He’s only wearing the face mask though, no shades, and no one meets his eyes. No one recognises him but they don’t meet his eyes and he wonders if it’s them thinking he’s a Shade or a straight up ghost or just another servant.

_“You found yourself a pretty little toy.”_

Frank tries to tune out most of the conversations he hears, most of them don’t mean shit. He hears entities talking about their new toys and he hears them talking about Francis of the Filth coming back. He hears giggling about how Chin Chin got his ass beat and smirks to himself, then he hears snickering about how Chin Chin’s servant got killed and left to rot and he stops.

_“She’s a good distraction.”_

He sniffs hard and wonders why no one realises he didn’t die, if they were so willing to think he was dead or whether they were just hoping he was. He knows most of these fuckers never gave a shit about him, he was just Chin Chin’s newest attack dog but he wonders why they don’t ask about him.

_“Mmmm, you like this one though.”_

Frank doesn’t know what he’s doing here, really he doesn’t, he keeps saying it’s for Safari Man so he can get rid of the person he brought home but it’s not. He’s looking for Chin Chin, he’s been looking for Chin Chin, all those realms he’s been jumping through for months and months. He’s hurt, he’s betrayed and he hates the fucking Dark God who took him away from the shit existence he had in his ruined realm.

_“Shut the fuck up.”_

Franklin, that’s his name, his name is Franklin, not Fake. He hates that Chin Chin ever gave him the name Fake, ever said it like a caress, like praise. He never realised how little he was getting until he got tossed aside like garbage, he never realised what actual affection was like until Chin Chin left him for dead.

_“Shut me up with fuck.”_

He should’ve seen it as a blessing, taken the chance to break away from someone who didn’t want him and run as far and as fast as he could. He should’ve hidden, never showed himself around any of these fucking realms again, he could’ve gone to the hood realm and lived out the rest of his life there instead. He could’ve cut and run that first night Chin Chin showed up, forgotten about Kohe and forgotten about the apartment and just run.

_“You’re such a fag, god damn faggot.”_

Part of him really fucking believes he’s here for Safari Man, here to find Chin Chin just so he can twist the knife a little deeper with insult to injury and all that gay shit. Part of him does hate Chin Chin, hates the black piece of shit as much as he should and doesn’t want anything else to do with him. Part of him isn’t a fucking idiot, part of him isn’t a dumbass cunt that’s the part he’s choking out until it shuts the fuck up.

_“God damn is definitely right.”_

He knocks back the rest of the bourbon and tries to pick out the two men talking in the crowd, he thinks he recognises the voices but he doesn’t remember where. One is smooth, warm like the expensive honeyed wine Kohe brings home sometimes and they drink straight from the bottle. The other is deeper or not deeper, there’s a growl to it, a roughness that makes it sound deeper than it is and reminds him of something.

_“Your puns are shit.”_

He sees them halfway across the huge room, two men with dark hair and the one with the familiar voice has his back to him. Frank sees the smirk on the other man’s face, the one with the slick, smooth voice and he knows this guy, he fucking knows this dude. He sees the glint of red all the way across the room, through all the fog and smoke and flashing lights and he knows this fucker.

He’s breathing hard and he doesn’t know why, the two men he thinks he should fucking recognise are kissing, there’s a glint of teeth that look too sharp but he doesn’t. He watches them dance and grind against each other, they dance to the music and they don’t and he stares at them until they get swallowed up by the crush of people. He keeps staring, he tries to listen and tries to fucking remember but he can’t.

Frank spends the rest of the night sitting there, listening to all the conversations and convincing himself he’s here for the right reasons. He doesn’t hear anything about Chin Chin, he never does, and he doesn’t hear anything about himself and he doesn’t know if he wants to or not. He keeps his eyes off the murals and he doesn’t notice the new ones, he keeps his eyes on the sticky bar and the dusty floor and the flashes of skin in the crush of flesh and pretends he’s smart.

* * *

 

We’ve been friends so long that it doesn’t take me very long to track him down, I know all his hide aways and all his bold holes, I know what he does when he wants to be powerful.  I also know he’s a fucking trickster at heart and maybe that’s why we get along so well, he’s the trickster that wants to steal the world and I’m the devil who wants to bask in the sin of it.

I check the easy places first, the ones he’s visited before even though I doubt he’ll be there and I don’t find him. I check the harder places, the ones very few people would attach to him because he’s so secretive about his sinning in this realm; the fancy yakuza run restaurant smells like expensive alcohol and has someone playing the violin but he’s not there. I check the realms closest to this one, I check the last realm he went on rampage in, I check the last realm we fucked in.

I know he’s not in any of those but I still look because why not? It doesn’t take me long to do, I don’t need to travel the same way he does and it’s gives me an idea of what the fuck he’s been doing. I find the Shade two realms away from him, lurking around the shadows, dipping through mirrors. I find it with a leash around its neck and no eyes to be seen, I think he’s finally learning how to play nice with his toys.

[The Shade ](https://frankly-unimpressed.tumblr.com/post/158041794426/see-i-got-3-reblogs-and-one-whole-comment-on-my)is shaking, whimpering with no voice and trying to crawl away from me but I smile at it. Lust is my favourite treat and this one is better than most, I wonder when he created it, if he’s been dumping all of his nasty little feelings into this one. I think he has, watching the trembling, shuddering humanoid shadow bound up with rope barely able to move but touching itself, stroking itself, I know he has. I wonder about that too, what pretty thing has caught his eye and made him ache sweet enough to dump all his lust on this poor Shade.

I take it with me of course, reach down and grab the leash, pull it into a bruising kiss to take the edge off. I taste the cold heat sweeping through this pretty toy, I taste cinnamon and…vanilla and I swallow down the thick lust in this Shade’s throat. I shudder with it for a while, lick the taste of cum from my lips because that’s what Chin Chin’s lust always tastes like and drag the Shade with me through the realm.

"Oi, Chin Chin, this pretty thing of yours is dripping with lust,” I say when I find him, when I find him exactly where I knew he would be. He’s weak now, he’ll want to feel powerful and there’s no greater monument to his power than this fucking temple of his with the murals of a gigantic monster. A monster made out of smoke sometimes and shadows others, a monster with a face that’s almost human, almost; a monster with too many hands and too few eyes but no, too many eyes.

He’s pretty in such an inhuman way, I miss the days he rampaged through realm after realm like that. The peace^lords are closing in on him, pushing the war closer and closer and he can’t run around the way he likes too anymore, or the way I’d like him to at least.

“O Chin Chin?”

The voice shakes the foundation of his fucking temple, vibrates through my bones, all my bones and I swallow down something wicked. I’ve missed this, I’ve really fucking missed this.

“Come get it, fucker!” I shout at him, grinning wider than a human face would let me and feel heat burning through this fake skin. I fling the Shade at him, watch it get shredded by too many hands, by too many claws and stick out my tongue to catch some of the poison-rotten blood that flies everywhere. [I moan at the taste, use a forked tongue to lick up all the drops clinging to my lips, to the long, sharp teeth pushing past my lips.](https://frankly-unimpressed.tumblr.com/post/157935453156/my-husband-franklyfilthyfantasies?is_related_post=1)

I close my eyes as I breathe in his scent of cinnamon and old blood, no vanilla here and it feels so good, I’m half hard just off the smell. I know there’s a blissed out smile on my face, that I look half delirious standing there, swaying to the music of him tearing apart his own silent shadow. I know we both look monstrous, horrific, terrible but in different ways; I know he looks like an eldritch mass of black. I know I look like a classic devil with the sharp horns and the red skin, I know I’m almost attractive with the dark sweep of hair and pouting lips, I know I’m inhuman with the wickedly curved teeth and slashing tail.

He’s a Dark God and I’m a Red Devil, we’re quite the pair.

When he slams into me, it’s not as the writhing mass that just decapitated the Shadow and drank its decaying blood. When he slams into me, it’s as something smaller but just as freezing cold, just as monstrous with teeth just as sharp. When he slams into me, I don’t go toppling because I’m not human and he knows that, I grab his hips tighter than I’d be able to with any of my pets and kiss him the way I haven’t been able to kiss anything in years.

I don’t have to worry about the flesh being torn and shredded by my teeth, he doesn’t have to worry about biting too hard with too many rows of teeth. We don’t have to worry about each other because neither of us is weak even if he’s been ducking and dodging and hoarding chromosomes for the last who knows how long. I lick into his cold, cold mouth and suck on his freezing cold tongue, I taste the cinnamon hot in his mouth and moan when he bites me.

There are too many hands on me, hands in my hair, hands curled around the horns on my head, cupping my ass and yanking on my tail and I can’t stop myself from rocking against him. I know he’s trying to overwhelm me, trying to make sure I don’t get enough breath to ask what the fuck’s been going on but I’ve known him too long to fall for it. I’m sinking my too sharp nails into his hips, slicing through the black suit he wears like a skin and his blood eats away at my skin, freezes my fingers and I love it.

“Ore wa chin chin,” he snarls, breaking the kiss, and I know he means ‘ _Fuck You_ ’ but I can hear the wildness under the words, under the snarl because he’s just as fucked up as I am. I have some pretty little toy back in the human’s realm, she’s full of the sweetest hate and moans so pretty for me but she’s not this, she’s only human. He pulls on my tail again, so hard I stumble backwards but all I do is groan deep in my throat, I love when he does that.

“Better plan, fuck me,” I tease, reaching around for his cock, ripping away the black cloth with a twist of my wrist and stroking him in the same motion. He’s always so cold, burning cold, and I love it. He’s a contrast to me, I feel every bruising grip and every biting kiss, it lingers on my skin like a physical memory as if I could forget him.

I breathe hard against his cheek, burning him with my hellfire soul or some poetic shit like that as I stroke his cock. He forces my face against his neck, using my horns like a handle and I love it, he makes me bite him by pressing so tight I can’t breathe. His blood always tastes of corruption and it’s close enough to sin that I whine into his skin, the taste is always so fucking good and I can never get enough. I know he likes me too, the taste of original sin in my veins, and there’s nothing better than when we can get high off each other.

“O Chin Chin,” he rasps, bucking up into my hand and it’s something about putting him down and getting on all fours. I can’t even moan, I’m so high on his taste and so full on his Shade’s lust and his lust and my own lust but I do let go of his hips. We’re both trembling, shuddering and swaying on our feet but I’m the one who drops to my knees, I make a show of it. I drag my hands down my body, trailing over all the places I knows he likes to bite and suck and tease and I know it doesn’t matter that I’m still wearing clothes.

I kneel in front of him, look up at him from under my lashes and the hair falling in my face with big, black eyes and lips parted around my panting. I want him to fuck my mouth a hairs breath from my lips, he knows what I want, and when he slips one of the attached hands into my hair I think he’s going to give me what I want. Instead he uses it like a handle and jerks my head back and the growl that claws its way past my lips isn’t from the pain; the snarl that spits from his throat isn’t from the pain of me breaking his ribs either.

“Fuck you,” he mutters and I-I stop, he doesn’t speak English, what the fuck? I knew he was losing power, that he was ducking through realms and hiding for a reason but hearing him speaking English is jarring. I almost lose my boner, I’m so shocked but then he cuts his thumb on a horn and presses the bloody finger into my mouth, past my lax lips. I suck automatically, staring up at him with questions in my eyes and knows he isn’t going to answer them now.

He will answer them though, I know he will and I keep eye contact as I swallow more blood than a tiny cut like that should be able to give. I don’t fucking care though, I let him manoeuvre me with his too many hands until I’m on all fours in front of him, still sucking on his thumb and gaze clouding over. I breathe another hot breath over his hand when he finally rips off the fucking jeans I’m wearing and my legs fall wider, less restricted and I wiggle my hips just because I can.

“Fuck me,” I tell him, not beg, not ask, tell because I’m not one of his little toys and he’s not one of my pretty things. I let my tail wag a little over my ass as he moves behind me, smile when he wraps the tip of it around one of his attached wrists and spreads my ass wide with two of his too many hands. There’s a second where I think he’ll pull another piece of bullshit on me but no, he slaps my ass hard, perfectly hard and the noise I make comes straight from my dick.

“Perfect,” I purr, dropping my head and looking down my body at my own leaking cock, past it to his cock. I can’t see his face from this angle and it’s too much effort to lift my head but I know there’s a smirk on his face, twisting his lips and I know I’m wearing the exact same one. He pulls hard on my tail and I arch my back, sticking my ass higher than any human would be able to with their rigid spines. He smooths a hand down said spine, digging into the vertebrae and scratching hard, leaving marks like the possessive fucker he is.

He doesn’t bother with stretching me and I’m glad, I don’t want comfort and care, I want to get fucked into the ground of his fucking temple and really feel something. When he presses the head of his cock to my ass, I bite my bottom lip until it bleeds but when he slides his dick in, in one smooth move, my eyes roll back into my head. He’s so cold, so fucking cold, freezing from the inside out and I fucking love it, almost as much as the sin heavy in the air.

There’s no bottoming out, there’s no second of adjustment. He pulls out in the same smooth move and snaps his hips back so hard I feel my pelvis crack and it’s been too fucking long.

He fucks me hard but not as fast as I’d like, he likes to think it’s teasing and it is but it’s also fucking annoying and the only consolation are his hips snapping hard enough to keep my pelvis broken. Every time his hips smack against my ass, it makes the cracked bone creak deliciously and makes my cock bob up against my stomach smearing precum against the dark hair there. Pain isn’t a sin but I still love it, I indulge in it as often as I can and it should be a sin based on that alone.

I try to rock back into him, clench around his cock to make him fuck me harder, to get him to speed up but he doesn’t. He pushes my head down, shoves my face against the floor and uses his grip in my hair to grind my face against the stone. He pulls hard on my tail, sharp tugs whenever he feels like it and sometimes he slaps my ass in time with it, sometimes he slaps my cock with one of those too many hands and all I can do is moan.

He doesn’t try to take care of me, he stops me from reaching down to touch my own cock, he keeps my face pressed to the floor and sometimes he presses another bleeding finger into my mouth. I almost love him, or rather I do, as much as I can love at least. I love him the way I love the smell of sin, I love him the way I love fingers curled around my cock, I love him the way I love the burning, aching pleasure in my gut and the visceral, physical need to cum. I don’t know love but I know lust, so I suppose I lust him.

“Fuck!” I whine when he smacks my ass again, when he grinds my face into the floor again, when our skin slaps together again. He fucks me good and hard, still slow, but that doesn’t stop the orgasm churning and burning in my stomach, the tightening in my balls. He fucks the way I know Dark Gods can and when he loses his grip on my tail and it smacks him across the face, he howls his laughter the way I remember.

“Yes!” I moan as I cum, when he wraps my tail around his throat and makes me choke him the way he loves. I cum against the floor, burning hot the way I haven’t been able to for too long, I feel the cum splash against my stomach, against my chest. He fucks me right through the first orgasm, just the way I like it and doesn’t stop even when he’s cumming too.

We’re breathing hard, shaking just slightly, catching our breaths but we’re both still hard. We’re not human but refractory periods are for pussies, I expect to cum at least five more times before he disappears again. I know I will because this is still Chin Chin, even if he’s wearing human faces and using human words.

“We should talk,” I sigh, thinking about why I came to find him in the first place, the rumours I heard about his Fake Francis and where that one was. I know about the fight on the rooftop, the whole omniverse does, but no one knew where Chin Chin went after and almost no one knows that the Fake Francis lived.

“Don’t worry, I’ll come find you in your temple, I like worshipping Dark Gods,” I tell him, squeezing his cock and wondering if he’ll tell me about his new fuck toy, the one he’s been dumping his lust on Shades for, the one that tastes vanilla.  


	9. Careful not to Trip

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Doped up, strung out, sex high and fight drunk

[She likes clubbing and he has a club, sort of](http://vocaroo.com/i/s0QwwtCly5EH), it’s a match made in…drunkenness.[ He was fucking drunk when he mentioned the ‘club’ ](http://vocaroo.com/i/s0qAdNXR5eAx)to her and she was drunk too but somehow she remembered it. [Chin Chin doesn’t think he’s ever gotten that drunk off such shit alcohol](http://vocaroo.com/i/s0XDp1fCKGs6) but there’s a first time for everything and at least he still does stupid shit when he’s drunk so there’s that. Eh.

He never wanted to see her here…well no that’s a fucking lie, he’s always wanted to see her here. Ever since he first heard her while bleeding in an alley he’d wanted to see her here, see her under the flashing lights and actually **_see_** her with the eyes he has here. But, not now, he doesn’t want her here when he’s too weak to really show her what this is, or what he is. He thinks bringing her is a mistake, a bad mistake, a stupid dumb fuck mistake he’ll regret in about ten hours when he’s less buzzed than his now but not now. Right now he’s enjoying her laughing and dancing and drinking, he watches her, drinking in the sight like she’s drinking shot after shot.

This isn’t the first time he’s seeing her, it’s the third and he is keeping fucking count, but he still feels like something is being ripped away from him. He saw her through the mirrors the morning after they’d fucked, while she was wandering through the living room before she turned to make breakfast. He saw her through the mirrors, shot up in bed when he felt her stroking the first reflections face and bit his knuckles to stay quiet. No one touched the mirrors, no one but himself and the Shadows he made, he didn’t know what to think about her touching them and he still doesn’t know what to think.

Her touch didn’t hurt but he could feel the ridges of her fingerprints, it didn’t hurt but he could feel the warmth of her hand being leeched away by the glass. He felt the give of her skin, stroking over the picture’s closed eyelids and down the line of his nose, he’d bitten his knuckle raw to keep the mural’s lips from falling open. She’d noticed so much, too much, she’d seen the marks around his throat from the Devil’s tail and she’d noticed the place where his broken ribs kept grinding together. He thought he’d covered it up just like the wound that slit his fucking heart open, that was still leaking sluggishly and she hadn’t noticed that so why the others?

“Dance with me!” she screams over the music and her voice is high pitched, happy. He’s never heard her like this and he wonders if this is how she always is in clubs, he wonders if other people get to see the gloss on her lips and the stretch of her smile. He thinks back to all the weekend lovers she’s had, all the nameless fucks and one night stands and wonders if they’ve all been blinder than him. Well, he’s not blind tonight, not in his Temple with his murals on the walls, not with all these eyes he can use to look at her.

He picks a pair of eyes at random, the largest mural on the wall behind the bar, and he lets his gaze linger on her hips where the hem of her skirt is tight. The short skirt shows off the full length of her legs then up to the high-necked blouse she’s wearing, tight across her chest and emphasizing her breasts. He lingers on the curve of her smile, directed at him, _him_. She’s smiling for him and not because he’s her God or because he’s doing something for her, she’s smiling because she wants to smile.

“Please?” she asks when he takes too long to answer and he can hear the promise in her voice, the hope and need laced underneath. He thought she would start to cling after they fucked, he almost hoped she would so it would be easier to see everything wrong with her. He wants her, of course he fucking wants her, but he doesn’t _want_ to want her. He doesn’t want to be attached to something so weak and mortal and short lived, he hates that he wants her but he can’t help himself. He knows if he gets a chance, he’ll snatch her away when he’s powerful again and he doesn’t want to get the chance.

He’s a mess of contradictions, wanting her but hating the idea of her and he doesn’t know which is worse but he’s getting up anyway. He’s smiling at her, looking to the left of her shoulder like he doesn’t see the flush on her cheeks or the fall of her hair against her neck; he has to keep pretending he can’t see her from dozens of angles. And even if bringing her here was a mistake, it was fucking worth it to see her like this, to see her at all.

Chin Chin never needed sight, he never missed what he gave up for this power, eyes gouged out and sewn shut for billions of chromosomes until he could rip the thread out was nothing; nothing compared to the power he got in return. He never needed his eyes because he can live without them, humans do it all the time, animals do it all the time and he lives better than them but he can appreciate the use of sight. When blank paper feels the same as important printed contracts, when screens can’t read themselves out to him, that’s when sight matters. It’s never mattered with ‘lovers’ because he’s never cared about seeing them, not when he could map them out with his hands or taste them on his tongue and build a picture of what they were.

She’s different, Isabella Gwen is different. He wants as much of her as he can get; her taste, her smell, her looks. He wants to see the vibrance of her purple hair or the flush on her cheeks when her eyes glaze over and she’s begging to cum. He wants to see her in colour because she’s a colourful person, a beautiful girl who he thinks he might l-

“Come here,” she snickers and she takes his hands, leads them along her body until they’re resting on her hips even though they’re not two steps away from the bar. He isn’t sure if it’s because she’s tipsy or because she doesn’t want to lead the ‘blind’ man into a crowd of strangers where he doesn’t have anything to ground him. He appreciates her consideration as much as he appreciates his sight right now and he wonders how anyone could ever let her leave their bed.

“Dance please,” she murmurs, resting her hands on his shoulders and he appreciates the way her heels make up for their slight height difference. He doesn’t know how to dance, he’s never hat to before, coming here has never been about dancing but he can feel the beat pounding-pounding-pounding in his bones. He moves with her, swaying and stepping with her, she leads him but doesn’t take the lead and he wonders if she knows it.

He breathes deep and smells; sweat, alcohol, drugs, sex, fear, anger, lust, blood. He feels her hands burning hot on his shoulders, feel the clothes shaking on his body from how loud the music is and it almost hurts. He feels the alcohol in his stomach, feels it burning in his gut or he could just be horny; she grinds against him and he’s definitely just horny. And they haven’t been here long, long enough for her to get some alcohol in her and long enough for him to get a nice long look at her but he wants to leave already.

He wants to take her to one of the side rooms, the alcoves where people used to leave sacrifices for him, pray to him. He wants to fuck her against one of his murals, or she can fuck him, mmmm yeah that sounds much better. He wants to feel her cock stuffed in his ass, fucking into him hard and rough because he wants it rough, painful even because pain is the only thing that stays with him across disguises and through bodies.

She kisses him as he thinks about her fucking him, doesn’t even have to catch his lips, she just tilts his head and then they’re kissing. She doesn’t lead into it either, no chaste pecks or closed lipped foreplay, she licks into his mouth without preamble and sticks her tongue halfway down his throat without a second’s hesitation. He moans for her because he knows it’s what she wants, she wants to know how she’s making him feel, she needs the reassurance. He moans for her because it’s what he wants, he wants to make her happy and he wants her attention on him, all of her attention. She steps closer into his space and her thigh is between his legs, the hem of her skirt is riding up but she doesn’t care. She presses her thigh closer and he gasps into her mouth, rocks his hips almost hesitantly even though he wants to grind against her until he’s cumming hard in his pants.

Her hands move from his shoulders to his hair, tangling in it and using it to keep their mouths together even though he knows she’s short of breath. Her heart beat is loud in his ears and he can feel it hammering in her chest every time she breathes deep and their chests press together. He can’t do anything but hold her, cling to her and whine into the kiss that’s good, so good. He can taste the alcohol on her tongue and the bitterness of the drugs she took when she thought he wasn’t looking and at least that explains why she has so much sex.

Ecstasy’s the name of the game and the name of her drug. He doesn’t care though, he likes it actually, the idea that she needs something more than alcohol to help her reach these highs or take her mind off her own body long enough to enjoy herself. He doesn’t know why knowing she’s doped up and tipsy makes his cock throb or why it makes him flush hot with wanting her. He doesn’t care either, he rocks against her thigh, grinds down and listens to the hitch in _her_ breath, feels _her_ hips buck against him.

The song changes, he feels it changing and he takes the opportunity now before he doesn’t get another chance. Pulling away from her is hard, it’s nearly fucking impossible but he manages somehow. He drags himself out of the kiss and he uses the mural’s eyes to see the dazed expression her face and swallow when he notices the string of saliva between their lips. She looks beautiful, fucking incredible, and she’s already leaning in for another kiss and he has to turn his head so her lips land on his cheek instead.

“Let’s go somewhere less crowded,” he suggests when she tries to turn his head for another kiss and at first he thinks she didn’t hear him because she pouts and it’s an excellent look on her. Lips pursed and full, right there and ready for another kiss but he doesn’t take the bait because he wants something better than some humping on a packed dance floor.

“Please,” he whispers and he doesn’t sound the way she did, playful and teasing, he sounds desperate and pained but he doesn’t care. He doesn’t give a fresh fuck what he sounds like if it gets him what he wants.

“Sure sweetheart,” and the words aren’t slurred, she sounds clear and alert and he knows she shouldn’t because this isn’t the kind of place that lets people be in control but he’ll take it. He untangles her fingers from his hair and links one of their hands together instead, leader her through the crowd instead. He knows she’s not as sober as she sounds, smiling at him and keeping close enough to press kisses to his jaw because she doesn’t ask how the blind man knows where to go. She doesn’t once stop to consider how he’s navigating through the crush of bodies or leading her past them without once having to double back or shove someone out of the way.

She notices the little things but this isn’t little and he’s never been more glad. He sneaks her into a little hideaway, one with a mural of himself that’s meant to be a mockery of some saint or the other. Before the mural used to be just him, holding nothing between his hands and he doesn’t notice the strands of hair hanging from the clawed fingers, he doesn’t think he’d realise the significance unless he could see the colour anyway.

He’s too busy to notice though, too busy helping her fit into the space, too busy nosy along her jaw and breathing deep and sucking kisses into the sensitive skin. He’s too busy getting lost in her in his Temple to notice all the little details.

* * *

 

She knows he didn’t want to bring her here but she doesn’t know why. The music is better than most of the clubs she goes to and she doesn’t recognize any of it but that’s okay, that’s fine. She can feel the beat pounding behind her breast bone and she can feel her skirt shaking with it, she likes how loud it is and she likes having to scream to be heard. She likes the people here, the ones who smile with their eyes and wink at her, the ones who turn their heads when she brushes by them. She doesn’t know what about this place makes her feel so high and light but she loves it.

Even the alcohol here tastes different than she’s used to but that might be the bitterness still stuck in the corners of her mouth. X makes her feel good but it tastes like so much ass, wait no, worse than ass because she’s actually eaten ass and it tastes better than this, at least the alcohol helps though. Kissing Dick makes it best, the best better there is or something like that.

His hands are cold on her skin but that’s okay, she likes how cold he is and it feels nice because she’s hot, really hot. She doesn’t know when the kissing starts but she’s glad it does because she loves kissing him, even if they’ve only done it once or twice. He tastes so nice, cinnamon spicey and a little rusty? She wonders if he wears a tongue ring sometimes because she always tastes the metal in his mouth, maybe his gums bleed or he gets in underground fight club that lets blind people get their ass beat too. Equal opportunity fight club, ass kickings for all!

She’s giggling against his mouth but he doesn’t notice, he’s too busy moaning into her mouth and that’s nice, very nice. She likes how it feels against her tongue, against her teeth to have him moaning for her, it’s buzzy like a bee. She likes getting reactions out of him, she doesn’t think he reacts to anyone else like this and she loves it, she loves him even though she won’t tell him that. She won’t tell him because shhh it’s a secret just like the secrets he keeps from her which aren’t as nice but she can deal.

She can more than deal when she gets a thigh between his legs and he starts humping her right here where all these people can see them too. He’s shameless and so is she and she loves how free X makes her feel, she doesn’t worry about her legs or her stomach or her face or her tits or anything. He makes her feel like that too, when it’s just the two of them, and right now it feels like just the two of them and he even acts like it. Grinding against her leg and digging his fingers into her hips, lifting her top and pushing down her skirt so he can grab her bare hips and she likes it.

The feeling of his hands on her is something she’s still getting used to because other than that night last week, week before? She can’t even remember when it was, not right now at least, but other than that night they haven’t seen each other or spoken but she doesn’t think it’s her fault. He needs his space, he always has and this relationship has always been on his terms which she…

He pulls away from the kiss and she whines, leaning in for another one and only getting his cheek. He’s saying something though, something about finding somewhere more private and oh, _oh_ she likes that! She answers in a voice that’s steadier than she feels and she calls him sweetheart, she’s never done that before but she’s feeling so affectionate. Touchy-feely and she can’t stop touching him and she really fucking wants to feel him. Her heart is thumping in her chest as hard as the music in her ears and she’s hot, burning up hot and everything is beautifully bright.

She’s so glad she wore contacts tonight instead of her glasses, there’s nothing in front of her face and fuzzing up what she can see. Dick is actually wearing his for once though and she wonders why, if there’s something about the flashing lights that makes him want to-need to cover up his eyes, makes them look red to her…

His fingers are ice cold on against hers when he laces their fingers together but she doesn’t mind and she has to walk quicker than him to keep up **_and_** press kisses to his jaw but she still doesn’t mind. She kind of wonders how he knows where he’s going because even if he owns this place and knows he floorplan, it can’t matter much when there are dozens of people in his way, can it? He doesn’t touch anyone though, not a single person but it’s not them moving out of his way, it’s him finding the spaces between the writhing bodies. It’s not that he knows where the little niche in the wall is, it’s him finding one that’s empty and almost isolated from the rest of the room without being completely closed off.

She’d ask, she should ask but he’s backing up against the wall and licking his lips and glancing at her from under his glasses. Or well, he’s glancing over her shoulder but the look is unmistakable and she sighs into another kiss, smiles into another kiss. It’s so easy to make him tip his head down or make him step back until he’s sitting on the little ledge where something else should be, probably a picture. She steps between his legs, rests her hands on his thighs and enjoys the way his mouth moves against hers.

“Please,” he whispers and she doesn’t know what he’s asking for and she doesn’t know what makes her slide a hand up around his neck. She doesn’t know why something hot pools in her gut when he breathes soft against her lips and tips his head back for her, breaking the kiss so he can bare his neck to her. So he’s into choking? Well she’s done that before, she grins as she tighten her grip slow, slow, slow, it feels so slow to her even though she knows it’s faster for him; faster in reality because she’s playing on the edges right now.

His eyes are wide behind those glasses of his and she giggles as she plucks them off his face, drops them on the ledge next to him and presses her lips to his jaw, skimming her lips along it. Her lips catch on stubble, not much, but it’s there and it feels very, very nice and she can feel him gasping when her fingers get tight enough to actually cut off his air. She bites the skin at the top of his jaw, squeezes her fingers and swallows hard when he moans so low it’s almost the same as the bass note thrumming in her veins and she….she wants more.

She wants him to moan like this for her, because of her, to twist him and turn him and pose him for her. One of his hands grabs her hip, tight tight, and drags her close, closer. She breathes sharp through her nose and grinds her hips against him, presses their crotches together so she can feel his cock hard in his pants, so he can feel her hard in her panties. She wants to fuck him, she wants nothing better than to fuck him but, but, but can they? Do they have lube? Would he let her?

“You really do like this pretty thing.”

Who? IG’s breathing hard when she whips around, feeling the person looking at them before she see him and he’s. He’s handsome, attractive the way Dick is, dangerously attractive and darkly handsome the way Dick isn’t. This fuck looks like “Bad Boy” personified but she doesn’t know why, it’s not the way he’s dresses and his face is model chick but his smile, something sharp about it, too sharp and mocking.

“I see why though, she’s got the devil’s own guile,” the man jokes, at least she thinks it’s a joke and, and, and his voice is very nice. His voice is very, very, very nice, she feels a shiver rip down her spine as he speaks and continues speaking and she’s already turned on but now she’s euphoric. She feels like her breath is turning cold in her throat and coming out minty fresh and frosty, she feels likes she could float off and it’s so much more than just the molly she took because it’s never this intense. She-she wants.

“I love you,” she moans, spinning back around and latching onto Dick’s throat. She bites, hard, too hard because she tastes blood and he’s gasping and whining but she doesn’t stop. She grabs his shoulders and keeps him pressed against the wall, she bucks into him, grinds her cock against his and knows he’s enjoying this because he doesn’t try to stop her. The hands on her hips pull her closer if anything, so close she can smell the sweat soaking into his clothes and feel his pulse jumping against her teeth.

“Mine, _please_!” she begs, breath hitching in her throat as she bites him again, tongue swiping over the blood and it tastes strange but everything does tonight. She doesn’t realise she’s crying until she taste the salt in her own mouth but it’s not, she doesn’t understand why she’s, she’s overwhelmed? She feels too hot, burning up and fizzling out, and she can’t get a deep enough breath but she doesn’t pull away from him. She needs to keep him here, can’t let him leave her because she loves him, loves him, loves him.

“Isa-Isabella,” he mutters, she feels her name buzzing against her lips and she sucks on it, sucks on the jut of his Adam’s apple and holds him when she shakes. When she shakes so hard she thinks her knees might buckle and she want to fuck him so bad, she wants to feel his mouth on her dick again, she wants his fingers inside of her.

“Isabella no,” he grunts but his hands keep her close, she-he, he doesn’t stop her and she can hear the man behind them saying something. She doesn’t know what but her knees do buckle and the only thing holding her up are the second pair of hands on her hips, just above Dick’s and they’re hot, fire hot, poker hot. She jumps because it burns, it _hurts_ , and then the hands are gone and Dick’s gone and she’s sitting on the ledge.

She’s blinking, staring at the crowd, at the blobs of light and she doesn’t see…

There’s a woman, standing where the man stood and she has the same confused expression on her face. She’s pretty the way the man was handsome, almost, not quite? IG stares, forces herself to focus but she can’t, the woman stays a pretty blur then she moves away and IG’s there alone.

What. The. Fuck.

* * *

Meeting Chin Chin that first time, in the Temple before the club opened its doors, he thought he knew what was going on. When Chin Chin tore his own Shadow to pieces and they fucked on the cold floor, he thought it was just like old times. When they met the next night when the club was open and Chin Chin smelled like sex and someone Red couldn’t place, he thought he knew was happening.

When Chin Chin shows up after a few weeks with his pretty little girl in tow, Red thought he knew what to do. He’s the devil and Chin Chin’s a dark god and they’ve played games with each other for billions of chromosomes, sometimes they steal each other’s toys and sometimes they break each other’s toys. Red’s nice though, he doesn’t plan on breaking Chin Chin’s lovely little girl, he just wants to play with her a little bit and he even brought something for Chin Chin to waste his time on. Red’s sure Chin Chin won’t mind, the girl is exactly his type, a little less than human, a little vicious and can see a little more than normal. Besides, Chin Chin’s never minded before.

Red’s sure Chin Chin won’t mind because he doesn’t even show his pretty little girl what he really is, he’s in his own Temple and he’s wearing a skin suit. He’s in his Temple pretending he can’t see every minute detail from ten different angles. Red knows Chin Chin’s seen his errant errand boy, the Fake Francis who keeps showing up on pretense of looking for his former Master. Red knows Chin Chin is having fun with his previous pet, dancing around him, literally. The Fake wants Chin Chin to release Safari Man from the shadow realm, or he thinks he does, Red knows the Fake wants more but he doesn’t want to admit it to himself.

That’s not _his_ game though, his game is to play with Chin Chin’s shiny new toy.

“You really do like this pretty thing,” he comments when he finds them in the little niche, the one with the saint mural, the one with the ledge for black candles for the dark god. He knows Chin Chin likes being pushed around, told what to do, he gets off on letting someone else think they have the power and control for once. He gets off and letting them fuck him, letting them choke him and hurt him because he’s a kinky lil fucker.

The girl’s got a hand around his human throat, squeezing nice and tight and Red can hear Chin Chin’s please purring even if the girl can’t. He half expects Chin Chin to beckon him over, let go of her hip with one hand and call him over, or make eye contact at the least but it doesn’t happen. Instead his face twists into a grimace and the first hints of doubt creep in.

“I see why though, she’s got the devil’s own guile,” he teases because he can feel the lust swimming in her veins, clouding up her brain and looks like Chin Chin found himself a naughty little girl who likes her vices. He likes her more and more every second because her lust is easy to manipulate, easy to multiply until she’s spinning back around and…biting. Ohhhh, he really likes her.

He’s there when her legs give out because maybe he made the lust too strong but that’s okay, he can help her work it out of her system and her dick.

“Switch? I even brought a toy for you to play with,” he offers with a smile, not a smirk because he’s in Chin Chin’s space, he’s asking a favour of Chin Chin. He knows how selfish dark gods can be with their toys so he’s willing to meet him more than halfway.

…

His horn breaks when his head slams against the Temple floor, he tastes his molten blood in his mouth and laughs as he spits it out. Oh?

“You could’ve said you wanted to fight fucker!” he laughs, grinning when Chin Chin grabs him by the waist and hauls him out of the Temple. The dancers move, part around them without even realizing why, well some of them do but those are the ones smart enough to keep their mouths shut. Red didn’t even realise Chin Chin hid them until they’re outside, until he sees the Shades and Shadows darting around, agitated.

“Winner gets to top?” he suggests, snickering when a pair of hands grab him by the throat and oh fuck he hasn’t had this much fun in so long! He twists out of the hands, grabs the ones attached to Chin Chin’s body by the wrists and kicks back, uses all of his weight to off balance the Dark God so they both fall, sprawl on the ground. They both roll around, roll away from each other and get to their feet and Chin Chin looks good, looks angry and Red grins wider.

There’s blood dripping from his broken human nose, dark purple blood that sizzle-pop-hisses when it falls on the ground. Then the human face melts away, drips and burns the dead grass like the blood and Red shivers out of his own disguise, feels his broken horn grown long and full again. He curls his tail around his leg and waits, waits for Chin Chin to make a move because he’s fighting Chin Chin, not the lanky hipster fuck he’s been prancing around as.

“Come on, I’m carrying this conversation on my back!” Red jokes, then he has to move because there’s a pair of hands grabbing his legs, trying to trip him up and take him down. His laughter rips through the air as he claws at the hands on his legs, splitting his own skin but he breaks the fingers curling around his ankles so it’s fine. They’re not in the Temple’s realm anymore, how could Red not realise? Oh well, he realizes when his molten, orange blood drips on the grass and leaves a nice trail after him and his blood should eat through the dirt but it won’t do anything to already scorched earth.

“She tastes nice, her lust at least,” he comments and hisses when a fist catches him dead on one temple and breaks a horn again, he feels the bone snap and growls low in his throat. Then Chin Chin grabs him around the waist again and it’s a tackle, trying to get him on the ground for what?

Red is used to this, he knows how Chin Chin fights so it’s easy to make sure when he lands on his back it doesn’t knock the air from his lungs. He doesn’t try to land on top because it’s just so much easier to stab shit with his horns when he’s beneath it. He doesn’t try to get away either, he doesn’t do anything but twist and duck and jerk his head until he feels something soft being torn; until he feels poison blood splashing on his face.

Chin Chin always rears back, he always pulls away, Red expects him to pull away and he’s already scrambling to break the hold and get out but, but, but  Chin Chin isn’t doing that. He’s not dancing away and Red’s caught off guard. He doesn’t expect the hands on the other horn until they’re already there, circling the base and fuck!

“Bitch!” he snarls when the other horn is broken and tossed away, hitting the ground with a sound like a hollow branch. He’s less happy now because this isn’t how it’s supposed to go. Chin Chin isn’t supposed to be over him still, Chin Chin isn’t supposed to be bleeding onto him and his horns aren’t supposed to be gone and he’s getting mad. When he punches, he doesn’t check the force and when it lands, he can hear the cartilage crunch so he guesses he just crushed the Dark God’s throat.

There’s retching and more blood lands on his face and maybe he can salvage this? The wild happiness is creeping back in and of fucking course he can still salvage this! He’s not the only one hurting anymore.

They’re in Chin Chin’s realm where it’s pitch black so he can be forgiven for not seeing the hands until they’re wrapped around his throat. He smiles up into the face he can’t see and writhes against the hands squeezing harder, harder, oh fuck he loves it and if he had the breath he’d beg for harder. He loves and he kicks out until he hits something, then he aims for that spot again, something relatively soft that he thinks is a stomach. He kicks and kicks at it, listens to Chin Chin cough and retch, feels spittle and blood and bile fall on him, smells it rancid in his nose and _loves_ it.

When his throat collapses, he wheezes because the pain is duller than a broken bone but it’s wetter, worse. He can’t see and he can’t breathe and fuck he’s living his best life. Then something sharp stabs him, gets in under the ribs and he can feel it lodge in one of the chambers of his heart, can feel it slice a lung on the way there and fuck!

“Fuck me!” he tries to say but it’s garbled because there are hands still around his throat and the words are barely words but Chin Chin understands, he hears them and hears the implication. He still twists the thing…horn, his own horn! If he could, Red would scream his delighted, manic laughter to the sky because his own horn! Chin Chin shoved his own horn into his own fucking heart it feels like he’s being burned alive and he’s living!

Chin Chin twists the horn, gets that last dig in before getting off him, takes the horn with him, and the molten blood that gushes out finally gives him enough light to see. He sees empty eye sockets and purple blood and too many teeth from a smile that’s not a smile; humans smile, animals bare their teeth and neither of them are either of those. Red sees Chin Chin’s hands stained with blood, both of their blood and his mouth twitches at the corners when he notices the spots that are burnt through to the bone.

He takes in the blood smear across a collapsed throat, sees bone peeking out between the smears and the twitches grow into a full-fledged smirk. He knows he doesn’t look better, he knows there are acid burns on his face and he’s quite literally bleeding out and that he lost the fight but he’s ecstatic. He loves fighting Chin Chin, feeling his blood pumping, feeling too many hands grabbing at him and feeling his own blood bubble and boil and bleed.

Nothing else can get him as high as this, not even the purest sin, and even if the fight didn’t go the way it was supposed to or follow any of the scripts they have, it was still fun. Still better than anything else he could’ve done tonight, Chin Chin’s pretty little girl included. Speaking of which.

“Ore wa.”

The words are rasped, grating together but that’s to be expected, right? Red did crush the fucker’s throat and they both need more time to regrow broken bones and knit split skin and replenish cursed blood, especially all at once. He wonders what the rest of the sentence was though, ‘don’t’? Don’t what? Chin Chin knew he was coming to the Temple more often now, bringing a new toy with him, easing her into being his pretty little sinner.

Chin Chin knew everything that went on in his Temple, he had dozens of eyes there. All of those fucking murals of himself, all of them with eyes he could use because the ones in his own head were long gone. There wasn’t a damn chance Chin Chin didn’t see him coming from a mile away and the Shadows dancing around them, just on the edge of what he can see prove that Chin Chin could’ve stopped him, asked him to leave so what?

“Ga daisuki,” the Dark God snarls through grit teeth and he…mine? What’s his?

…the girl? His lovely little girl? Chin Chin…fought him because he wanted to fuck the girl with the purple hair?

Red stares, he can’t-there nothing to do but stare because this is, this is different from Chin Chin speaking English. Different from him wearing a human skin and walking around with still bleeding wounds, ones that won’t heal and still haven’t healed. This is completely different from running away from Francis of the Filth and losing a fight with a  human, this isn’t anything the Devil has ever seen before and he’s seen-well he hasn’t seen everything but he’s come pretty fucking close.

“O Chin Chin.”

_‘She’s mine.’_

He feels the way he did when Chin Chin didn’t rear back after getting stabbed, he feels like he’s scrambling for the next step but there isn’t one. This is, Chin Chin doesn’t pick up toys the way Red does, he never has but he’s never been attached to any of them. He’s always willing to throw them away, break them for fun just to see how much he could do before they tried to lave and he had to kill them. Red prefers to keep his toys around a little longer, coax out one more drop of sin from them before he sends them on their way. Or he makes them something a little less than human and lets them play with him for a while.

Between the two of them, the Devil takes better care of his flock than the God but the Devil needs his flock and the God just needs what he can get from them. Red needs the wool, the meat, Chin Chin needs the blood, the marrow from their very bones. They both need, but this, Chin Chin is treating a sheep like a prize, something to cherish and keep to himself; a pretty little bauble that he snatches away before anything can break it.

Red doesn’t understand. Is this part of Falling? He doesn’t, he doesn’t understand. He doesn’t think he ever will, what is this?

“ore wa o chin chin ga daisuki nandayo.”

 _‘she belongs to me, no one else touches her. Don’t try._ ’


	10. I love you Divine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She's an earthly comfort and he's so divine, so divine, so divine.

[_Love. Love. Love_.](http://vocaroo.com/i/s1Y5jauQnriq)

[I have to love her](http://vocaroo.com/i/s132TPQhHIbR), I was made to love her, I have to find her, I was made to want her. My Master wanted her, my Master wants-no, **_I_** want her now. I hold his rage, I hold his lust, I hold his everything, I hold his…lovely little girl. I want to hold her, touch her, she is…beautiful.

[“What the fuck?!”](http://vocaroo.com/i/s1dmCbpzGa9o) her voice is high pitched…happy. Yes, high pitched means happy for her, he heard her and now I’m hearing her. I love her.

[“Get the fuck away!”](http://vocaroo.com/i/s1UWpLiyO1v5)

She’s…moving. I can’t see her, he didn’t give me eyes, he doesn’t want to see his lovely little girl right now. Fine, fine, I don’t need eyes, I heard her scrambling on the bed. I hear her heartbeat-beat-beat, very strong means happy-excited-aroused.

“Love,” I tell her, words hurt to make but I make them for her, he would do anything for her and I have his love for her. I need to do anything for her, make him proud, make him love me too…

“Love you,” I say, crawling towards her bed…feel, feel, feel my way. My hands are smearing on her floor bad, no focus, bring me back together. I need to show her what I am, only way to make her understand. I love her, make her understand, make her love me. He wants her love, he wants her understanding, he wants and he takes and he gave. He gave me her, no, gave me to her.

I hear her, moving against the sheets, trying to move away no. No, she has to see me but no lights, no lights to see. She needs to see to understand, maybe then she loves him, me?

“Please,” I rasp, grabbing at nothing, trying to get to my break-apart knees. So hard to stay together, he didn’t make me well-no, he made me well but I am not good enough for him. He gives me lust, I hold it for him. The Devil gives me lust, I hold it for him and I love him. He tears me apart and I love him. He gives me love and I hold it for him, I love for him and I love her and I want him.

“Please love,” I beg, then sprawling, head cracking on the ground. Horn breaks as my head hits the floor? No, no, I’m not the Devil’s but I remember it happening and why am I here? She hit me, hard, harder please. Everything is hard to keep together, have to stay together for her-him-her? I don’t know.

Body dissolves then forms back because I need to stay whole for her, she can’t love something apart and broken. He can’t either. I have to be good for them, enough for them. I lick my lips and taste the rancid, bad blood and shiver-shudder-tremble. Nice, nice, nice. I remember the taste of poison-toxic blood; cinnamon. I remember the taste of molten-burning blood; pepper spice. I think about her blood; copper-iron.

“What the fuck? What the fuck? What the fuck?” she’s whispering, chanting under her breath and it reminds me of ‘ _please, please, please need to cum, cum_ cum’. He heard her say that, she begged him, I love her.

…

She has him, she has them. I remember, him touching her, tasting her. I’m jealous of him but I love him too, he made me, I have no choice. The Devil’s guile, she has the devil’s guile, and the devil touched her too. I love the Devil, he gave me good things, made me feel good things and I remember the taste of the Devil.

She has them. She can have them. She can have me.

I have to love her but I don’t want to. I don’t want to. I hate her.

Lucky. Lucky. Lucky. Lovely little girl.

“Hate,” I whine-whimper-sob. I love her, he made me love her because he doesn’t want to anymore but I hate her. Jealous of his lovely little girl. I don’t want to but I have to, he made me this way, my God, my Master. I hate his lovely little girl.

“Hate you.”

I do, do, do, do.

* * *

 

He’s taking her to his club, which he has apparently and that answers the question of what the fuck he does for a living. She’s a little mad that she had to get him drunk to tell her about it, really drunk, as in so much alcohol she was a little worried she accidentally poisoned him kind of drunk. She doesn’t remember why they were drinking but she doesn’t really care anymore because she’s getting ready to go.

She never would have pegged him for a club kind of guy, he’s a little too anti-social but she’s a little too anxious so it works out mostly. Her hand trembles as she tries to get her eyeliner perfect and she has to grab her wrist to stop it from moving so much. She’s not sure whether her hands are shaking from the nerves or just not steady tonight because well, she…she doesn’t know why. Everything about this feels like deja reve, like she’s dreamt about this happening before which is weird all on its own because she doesn’t tend to dream.

“Fuck,” she breathes, slow and desperate. She wants tonight to go well, she hasn’t seen Dick since they fucked and the night they got drunk doesn’t count, it really doesn’t. It’s been at least a month since she found him beat to shit and he still hasn’t explained that to her and it’s almost like he’s been avoiding her. The first two weeks were fine, he was doing his thing, she did hers and they saw each other in the hall but they were usually busy which was how they worked.

The second two weeks though, those were strange. Dick refused to acknowledge her, he would cock his head in the opposite direction and then turn to walk away from her even when she called after him. He didn’t answer when she knocked, even when she sat in front of his door all day with her laptop, he didn’t come out and she knew he always had somewhere to be on Thursdays. Fuck, the only reason she’s even seeing him now was because she lied to the super about the blind man losing his key and him sending her to ask for the spare.

She ambushed him when he came home, waited on his ratty old couch with a beer and thought about what she could say to him. When he finally walked through the door though, he didn’t even flinch when she called his name, not a single reaction when she threw a cushion at his head and it bounced off. He’d walked into the kitchen, pulled out a bottle of vodka and a bottle of sprite and they spent the rest of the night getting plastered. She doesn’t know why he told her about the club then or why he avoided any topics but the ones specific to her but…but that’s why she needs tonight to be okay.

“You dick,” she mutters, staring her reflection dead in the eye and breathing in counts of three. She’s wearing her contacts tonight, the special purple ones with her prescription and she’s wearing makeup and her hair is styled in the perfect messy bun. Her lips are blood red, matte of course, and her eyes are covered in sparkly purple and blue and black and look exactly like a galaxy, she even went all out and did some contouring although her face looks more angular than usual.

She’s wearing her favourite top, her ‘get laid’ top that’s tight on her tits and snug around her neck but shows off her arms and back very nicely. She likes the way shirt clings and she likes the sparkling silver threads through the black cloth and she likes the way it feels when people slip it over her head. The skirt is just one of many minis, this one is purple because likes to match her colours and the heels are just because she likes to dance in them.

Club ready, she looks club ready but she doesn’t feel it. She feels sick and uneasy and just so strange. She’s fidgeting with the eyeliner when the knock comes and she’s still there when he lets himself in, she hears him step into the living room but he knows her apartment well enough somehow to not need his cane. He finds her glaring at herself in the mirror and she notices the glint of his glasses over her shoulder as he leans against the door frame, smirking.

“Ready?” he asks while she tries for the tenth time to get her shaking hand to cooperate with her because this look just doesn’t work unless she’s got winged liner sharp enough to cut a man. Preferably the man behind her, the one smirking and preening, the one wearing a nice tight shirt and nice tight pants and the nice tinted shades he still doesn’t wear all the time. She feels like she’s seen him leaning there before, feels like she has something to say and digs her nails into her palms to keep her mouth shut.

“You’d look hot in lipstick,” she says instead of anything else she could say, like yes she’s ready, or hey why the fuck have you been avoiding me or even asking him about those glasses. She doesn’t give in to him, doesn’t go along with what he wants but she doesn’t say anything that’ll satisfy her either so it’s a compromise even if he doesn’t know about it and it makes her feel at least a little better.

“Red maybe,” she suggests, snatching up her makeup box and dumping out all her lip colours in the sink with shaking hands. He doesn’t say anything, doesn’t ask her what she’s doing as she rifles through all the different containers, searching for a colour that’ll look good on him because he’s going to wear her lipstick. She doesn’t know why the idea of an indirect kiss makes her stomach drop or why she suddenly wants to kiss him instead, smear her lipstick on his mouth instead even if she can’t do that with matte.

“Make me pretty then,” is all he says, shuffling behind her and sliding past to sit on the toilet, leaning back until he’s against the tank and spreading his legs wide. She can’t see his eyes through this tinted shades but his eyes never have shown emotion the way other people’s do, she thinks he’s been blind his whole life or close to it since he doesn’t emote with them. She can’t see his eyes but she can tell he’s tense, it’s in the set of his jaw and how stiff he is even sprawled off on the toilet. His hands are resting on his thighs but his fingers are beating out a pattern and his head is tilted to the ceiling the same way it was before they fucked.

“You’re already hot, I’ll just make you hotter,” she corrects him, snatching something glossy and she has no idea what it even is because she just wants to touch him. He doesn’t lean forward when she steps in front of him and he doesn’t say anything when she climbs into his lap, skirt riding up until she’s sure her underwear’s showing. That’s why she likes this skirt, it shows off everything and makes dancing so much more fun than it already is.

His hands come up to rest on her hips as she leans into him, uncapping the gloss and smearing globs of it on the middle of his lips. She doesn’t think clean lines would look good on him so she just adds more colour to the centre of his lips then reaches up to smear it with her thumb. She doesn’t know which of them swallows harder when his lips part for her and she knows she doesn’t breathe when her finger presses into the meat of his lip. Her hand is still shaking as she spreads the colour around and it shakes when his tongue darts out and licks the tip of her thumb but for a different reason.

She shudders because she remembers the way his tongue felt on her cock, the flat of it dragging over the length of it, the tip of his tongue pressed just hard enough to the underside of her dick and tracing the veins. Her breath hitches, catching in her throat when he licks her thumb again and she doesn’t breathe when his lips close around her finger and sucks softly. His eyes are shut and his lips are red, red, red and she…she doesn’t want to go anywhere, she doesn’t want to go to his club. She wants to stay here with him, get him in her bed this time, and ride him into the mattress or fuck him. Would he let her?

“We don’t have to go,” he whispers and she almost doesn’t hear him as he lets her finger go with a ‘pop’ that’s way too loud in the quiet bathroom. The hands on her hips are cool, not cold, but they feel good and she wants to feel his bare skin gliding against hers. She wants to taste him, suck his cock or eat his ass, or just kiss him for hours. She likes kissing him, he tastes like his cinnamon cigarettes and always moans into her kisses and even if he can’t see with them, he always fights to keep his eyes open.

“We can stay here,” he offers and he pushes up her top, pushes down her skirt so he can dig his fingers into her hips, pull her harder against him. She drops the lipstick on the tile and she knows she’ll have to clean it up later but she doesn’t care, she wraps her arms around his neck, wrists crossing over each other and tangle in his hair. It’s soft, so soft and she likes the way he lets her pull his head back so she just has to dip her head to catch his lips in a kiss.

He tastes like cinnamon, he tastes like metal and she wonders if he wears a tongue ring sometimes. He tastes like spice, something spicy hot and it burns her tongue as she skims his teeth, as she sucks on his. She doesn’t know what he was eating but the pepper-spice is nice and she sighs into his mouth, lets her own eyes slip close so she can focus on moving her mouth against his.

Then he bites her, teeth sharp on her bottom lip and digging into her flesh hard, almost harder than she’d like. She almost pulls away because fuck, it hurts and there’s blood in her mouth now and what the actual fuck? She jerks but he follows her head, licking over the split in her lip, sucking on it and fuck that shouldn’t make her cock throb. She’s not, she doesn’t like, she likes giving it and she likes making other people feel good but not-not for herself so why? Why does this make her feel hot and nice and make her dick twitch in her panties and make her grind down as hard as she can.

“Fuck,” Dick hisses and it feels sharp against her mouth but she doesn’t stop kissing him. He breaks the kiss and she jerks his head back, pulls hard until she can kiss his throat instead.

“Fuck!” he growls again and she feels it against her teeth, smiles and bites him harder until she’s actually shocked there isn’t more blood in her mouth. And he doesn’t stop her, he lets her maul his fucking neck and all he does is keeps holding, rocks up a little and she can feel his dick hard in his pants. It takes a little concentration, a little less of getting lost in the taste of his skin on her tongue to figure out his rhythm before she can move with him and lift herself up as much as she can while straddling him.

“Do you?” he starts but the words break apart into a moan and she grins wickedly against his throat, breathes in the smell of sweat and can’t wait for the scent of sex to mix with it. She wonders how far he’ll let her go, if he’ll let her use teeth if she goes down on him-when she goes down on him?

“Red. Red. Red. Red. Red.”

The automated voice makes her stop, makes her sit back so he can pat down his pockets for his phone, she didn’t know he had one. She’s breathing hard as he swipes to answer the call and she tries to climb off him but he doesn’t let her, he keep his grip on her and leans forward until he can rest his head on her shoulder. She swallows hard, trying to get her breathing under control while he murmurs quietly into his voice in a language she doesn’t recognise and she thinks it’s the same thing she heard him sleep talking in.

“I need to go,” he sighs against her collar bone but he doesn’t move, he doesn’t even put the phone down, “something came up and I need to go.”

She doesn’t say anything because he has to go and it’s not her, it’s not fucking her, he just has something to do. She can feel his fucking cock against her ass, his face is pressed into the crook of her neck and he’s still holding her, it’s not her. He wants her, even if he disappeared for a month after they fucked, it’s not, it wasn’t her fault. Besides, they’re not fucking together, they’re friends who fucked once and got drunk another time and spent all night kissing until they passed out in her living room.

“I might not be back until next week,” he adds but his voice is carefully neutral, not a single emotion slipping into it and she wonders. She really wonders what he’s doing, why he’s doing it. He sounds different than she’s used to, he’s acting different and she doesn’t know if it’s because he’s getting cockblocked by ‘Red’ or because of something else.

“Call me when you get back?” she suggests even though she knows he doesn’t have her number, she never gave it after all.

“Yeah.”

His lips are stained red from the lipstick and there are smears around his mouth from her kissing him, smears of red on his neck from her biting him and they’re already turning that perfect shade of purple she loves so much. He looks like a fucking mess, hair sticking up or falling in his face and she can see his eyes through the shades and she can see how the pupils are blown wide but it’s not a bad look on him. Next time she wants to do his whole face, eyeliner, mascara, even foundation if he’ll let her then she wants to fuck him until he looks just like this, messy and sexy as fuck.

She watches him from the bathroom as he walks out, listens to his footsteps on her floor then the sound of her front door falling shut behind him and drops her head in her hand. She’s all dressed up with nowhere to go anymore and she should call someone, call up Marcella or Rob or even Kat, see if any of them want to hit up a club with her.

She ends up sitting by her desk with her head pillowed on her crossed arms and forcing herself to just breathe. Her chest feels tight, crushing tight, and her face feels too sharp and her hips feel too narrow and she has to force herself to breathe, breathe, breathe.

* * *

 

Hearts are traditional, tongues are modern. Blood is standard and souls are expensive. Skin will do in a pinch but bone is preferred. Don’t give what you’re not willing to take, don’t take what you’re not willing to use and don’t use that about which you don’t know jack shit.

Red knows all the rules of sacrifice, he’s been playing the game as long as Chin Chin has and he’s been making deals for chromosomes. He likes blood because it tastes good, he likes souls too but they’re not as easy to pawn off these day; not too many entities in the market for a soul when autistic shows like Francis’ exist. Red knows all the rules and he knows all the way to break them, he knows how to fix the game to make sure he wins, he knows how to make a contract air tight and he knows the most important thing is: Never Deal With Dark Gods.

Chin Chin is an idiot, a fucking dumbass and Red’s not sure the shit fuck cunt knows it yet. Chin Chin made deals with the Condemned, he gave his eyes to them because why the fuck not? When he was younger, the peace^lords sewed them shut anyway and he learned how to live without them so it’s not like he missed them when he gave them to the Condemned. Red still has no fucking clue why Chin Chin bargained with the Condemned of all things, there are much more powerful entities out there, ones who would’ve taken something more traditional than his eyes.

The Condemned roam the shadow realm, they’re not dead but they aren’t…no one knows what they are exactly but they can make deals at steep prices. Chin Chin made deals with the Condemned and Red just kinda accepted it, not his problem you know? But now, now Chin Chin’s making deals with himself and what kind of shit fuck idiot?

“You dumped it?” he mutters, circling the Shade that’s writhing on the floor, bleeding black blood and moaning to itself. Chin Chin stands over the thing, looms over it and he’s looking better but better in an unhinged way that Red definitely likes even if he doesn’t buy it. He’s not going to say anything though, if Chin Chin wants to make deals with himself and give his Shadow henchmen more sentience than usual then that’s not his problem or his look out.

“All of it,” he adds when he tastes the spicy sweet lust and the bitter love and the ice cold hatred, they aren’t sins but the emotions roll off the servant in waves, pulse in the air around it. Red’s got the feeling this won’t end well, his heart still skips a little when it starts beating too hard but it might have something to do with being stabbed there every night for two weeks. He doesn’t know what game Chin Chin’s playing but he’s happy to join in, he’s still having fun after all and his nice new toy loves pressing her lips to the spot between his ribs.

The pain is thrilling, electric, and sometimes Chin Chin doesn’t just stab his heart, sometimes he gets choked out again or sometimes he gets his neck snapped or his bones broken or his stomach gutted. He’s cum more than once like that, blinking away the black spots and fighting to breathe while Chin Chin smirks in his face, bleeds onto it because he’s always giving as good as he gets. He claws Chin Chin’s throat open, he breaks ribs with his punches, he even gets to smack him against something hard enough his skull cracks open and his brains leak out onto the floor.

They always end up on the ground, bleeding onto each other, burning each other with their blood and then they fuck. They make their broken bodies move, make their broken bodies fix themselves faster and they fuck. Red’s pretty sure the taste of cinnamon will be stuck in his mouth for days and he’s starting to taste spicy-hot on Chin Chin’s tongue too. He doesn’t know exactly what’s been going on but he’s loved every fucking second of it and it’s been too long since he’s gotten a chance to live like this.

“Ore wa o chin chin ga daisuki nandayo,” Chin Chin tells him proudly, and he’s half crouched on the ground and he looks closer to his old self than Red has seen him all this time. He’s been dancing around all the realms, going on rampages to make people afraid of him again, he’s been toying with the Fake Francis for weeks and stringing him along. Red thinks Chin Chin’s even convinced himself he’s having fun and not just avoiding the issue, not that there is an issue but something something emotional constipation.

Is it Red’s business? Eh not really so does he care? Again not really, Chin Chin is his friend for lack of a better word and fuck buddy would mean they fucked more often than they did so whatever. He’s just a little awed by how fucking idiotic Chin Chin is being, so what if he loves a little mortal thing? Red doesn’t really give a shit. There are tons of other lycras who fall in love with humans; Pink Guy for example, or Omega or whatever handle he’s going by these days.

Pink Guy loves Frank who is human, powerful but still human. Salamander Man loves Francis of the Filth too, even if it’s not as plain, and that little Lemon thing loves Safari Man. Fuck even Red Dick likes Prometheus, but that’s a little weird and he doesn’t like to think about that too much. Mr Negi Generation what the fuck ever likes humans too, he switches them out a lot but he likes him.

Lycras like humans, it’s normal, not that weird or even that special. Chin Chin’s a Dark God, not the God whatever that would be, but he’s still a lycra so he’s allowed to like a human and Red really doesn’t understand how many levels of bullshit Chin Chin’s on right now. Sure he was a little fucked up…a lot fucked up when he realised Chin Chin found a lovely little girl who he wanted to raw him until he cried but that was just shock mostly. He doesn’t really care anymore and if he can’t touch, well he’s been meaning to ask if he could watch.

He doesn’t really care about her, sure he’d eat up her lust and breathe in her wrath but he doesn’t really care about her. He’d love to see her fucking Chin Chin, have him spread out underneath her and grabbing at the sheets with too many hands, jacking himself off maybe but Red doesn’t think he’d be invited even if it happened. Chin Chin’s been avoiding his pretty baby for a while, made her think she hadn’t even gone to the club the night they’d fucked, made her think she’d just fallen asleep.

Red doesn’t really know why, hadn’t Chin Chin thought about the fucked up shit she might see before he brought her along for the ride? He knows wiping memories takes care but he didn’t think Chin Chin would ever care enough to do it, he wonders if Chin Chin realises how much he’s trying to dump onto a creature that’s barely alive enough to move. There’s so much emotion being thrown into a single Shade and Red really wonders what Chin Chin plans on doing with them when his henchman breaks.

“And why the fuck do you think this is gonna work?” he sighs, crouching down and grabbing the Shade’s face by the chin. He turns the featureless face however he wants and he looks at the impression of eyes, the suggestion of a nose, the only thing this Shade actually has is a mouth, for fucking or something. He doesn’t really know why Chin Chin’s henchmen have mouths when they barely ever speak or why they bleed rancid blood, there’s a lot he just doesn’t give a fuck about.

“Ore wa o chin chin.”

And he’s rolling his eyes so hard they’d get stuck if one wasn’t already bleeding and broken, he has no idea why Chin Chin decided to show him this thing instead of just fucking him after their latest fight. When he called and heard Chin Chin’s pretty pet on the other side, breathing hard on the other side, he expected to get some kind of excuse about why Chin Chin couldn’t make it. Instead, he gets told to wait because Chin Chin’s coming, not like that unfortunately, and then he shows up five minutes later with lipstick smeared on his mouth and his cock hard in his suit.

Red hadn’t even gotten the chance to ask what the fuck was going on before Chin Chin lunged at him and then they went rolling across the Temple floor because that’s where they met up most days. Half an hour, several broken bones and at least three deaths between them later and Chin Chin drags him over to see this thing in the basement. A Shade that’s cowering in a corner, scratching at the walls and itself and moaning. Red’s never been so impressed, no really, he’s not being sarcastic at all.

“Because I say so isn’t an answer dipshit. What happens when this thing dissolves or did you fix that little problem after you fell?” he scoffs because why the fuck should he tip toe around shit anymore? Chin Chin fell, he’s a fallen dark god and Red actually has no idea what that means because it’s never really happened before. God-like entities have fallen before, lost their power and faded into obscurity, usually because they’re too arrogant to keep doing the leg work. Chin Chin got too arrogant, trusted Francis of the Filth too much and now he’s weak but Red knows Chin Chin doesn’t need Francis the way other Gods would, he’s got his back up plans.

“O Chin Chin!”

Red rolls his eyes again and scrunches his nose when a hand wraps around his tail and pulls hard. He doesn’t actually give that much of a fuck, especially when Chin Chin starts acting like a fucking toddler throwing a temper tantrum.

“Oh yeah so scary big bad God, why don’t you suck my cock?” Red offers with a smirk, pursing his lips and kissing the Shade. He scrunches his nose again at the taste, sour and a little rotten but he’s tasted worse and it’s worth it to have Chin Chin reeling him backwards by the tail. He falls on his back with a soft ‘oof’ but he’s still smirking as Chin Chin crawls over him; there’s a pair of hands on his hips and one at the base of his tail rubbing _just_ right. Then there’s another pair pulling on his horns to drag his face up and oh fuck there’s a hand pressed up against his crotch, the heel of the palm digging in with just hard enough to feel the painful side of good.

“O Chin Chin,” Chin Chin  grumbles, pouting like a two year old and Red snickers as he tips his head up to kiss those pouting lips. He doesn’t really mind when the Shade in the corner moans louder and the scent of arousal that’s not his or Chin Chin fills the air around them. He really doesn’t give much of a fuck.

* * *

 

“Todd’s a fucking asshole.”

He can hear her, plain as day, and he can hear her friend on the phone. Her voice is rough with sleep, deeper than it usually is because she isn’t paying attention and maybe because of who she’s talking to. He hasn’t heard her talk to this one in a while but maybe that’s because he hasn’t been listening in on her life as much. He doesn’t care anymore and it’s _great_.

“Where’d you see him?”

Chin Chin doesn’t give a fuck what she does or how she does it. She fucked someone new the other week, he thinks it’s the friend she’s talking to right now and he didn’t think they had that kind of relationship but whatever. He heard them moaning for each other, fucking into each other and he just rolled over and counted down from a hundred until he fell asleep. Sure it might have taken two sets of one hundred but he’d still managed it and without feeling jealous of her friend too.

He smiles with all of his teeth as she complains about Todd, whoever that is, and he’s still smiling as he brings the cigarette up to his lips. Franklin has been snooping around the Temple more and more often, he’s getting desperate and Chin Chin is done with him too, he doesn’t really care to take back his old servant. He’s been working, getting his power back up and terrorising his realms, it’s been hard since they know about him losing to Francis of the Filth but he’s doing it.

Murdering anyone who shit talks him helps and he realises he’s been too soft on all of them recently. He hasn’t been ripping their insides out and forcing the fear of a Dark God in them, he’s let them run around and play too much and now it’s time to make them suffer even if it was his fault. His realms are sombre again, nothing but corruption in the air and poison in the ground, he’s made sure it’s impossible for less powerful fuckers to even set foot there again.

“I’d love to babe but I have a thing.”

His ears don’t perk up when he hears that even though she’s talking about plans she has this weekend with her brother. Apparently he’s performing somewhere and wants her to show up for support, he still doesn’t understand the relationship between those three but he doesn’t question it. He makes a note of it though, he’ll have Red come over with his pretty baby and they’ll have a party because they can. He wants to make sure she hears when she comes in and no it’s not petty, he just wants to have some fucking fun.

His heart doesn’t skip into double time when she stretches and he can hear all the little bones in her spine crack. He’s listening to her but it’s only because she’s the only interesting thing in this apartment at three in the morning. He’s sitting on his window pane, smoking and listening to her. He can hear other things of course; the buzz of the neon billboards across the street and on the buildings, rats and roaches scurrying around, cars flying down the road, even the sound of his own heart beating strong and steady in his chest.

There’s also the sound of dozens of breaks in dozens of bones grinding against each other as they knit back together. He’s been fighting the Devil every chance he gets, fucking him even more than that and Chin Chin likes it, he likes feeling powerful again and he likes being a piece of shit and he likes being able to heal the way he’s supposed to. Sure there’s a scar between his ribs but he can ignore that, sure it bleeds sometimes or itches like hell other times but he can deal with it, he can ignore it.

“I made a deal with a Dark God,” he hums under his breath, feeling the smoke curling in his lungs and he doesn’t breathe it out because he doesn’t have to. The human skin is just a mask to wear again, it’s not the only body he can fall into when he’s exhausted, not something to get used to because he can’t use anything else. If he listens, he can hear the music thumping in his Temple through the mirrors, he doesn’t use them to travel anymore because he doesn’t need to. He doesn’t have to step through the big ones or stick his head through the small ones and force the rest of his too static body through the frames.

“Chromosomes for love, now everything has gone to shit and I don’t have a reason,” he sings ruefully, flicking the ash through the window and wondering what he’ll do now. Francis of the Filth is still powerful even if he’s scared, rightfully scared, and Frank ** _lin_** is stuck nosing around the Temple with a mask because he doesn’t have any other choice. It’s either he shows his face around the club or let his unwanted house guest spend the rest of his fucking days on that shitty couch of theirs.

“Doesn’t matter if I’m strong, if I’m a shadow.”

Francis’ friends are scattered across the omniverse, Salamander Man, Safari Man, even Pink Guy is half lost to him and he’s stuck looking for fighters willing to join him for their war. Chin Chin’s been hurting but so has Francis and it’s the only consolation prize he can find.

“I just wanted to belong, and I was willing to do anything.”

He breathes deep and hears the walls creak as he steals the energy from them. He can’t see the apartment but he knows it looks like shit, he knows the paint on the walls is cracked and peeling. He knows there are holes in the plaster from him punching them so often, he knows there are shards of mirror in the corner from him trying to climb through them and not being able to, falling over so many times and getting cut by the broken glass. He snorts when he thinks about the huge crack in the stupid glass table he got with the place, he feels along the spiderwebbing crack sometimes and always ends up sucking on his cut fingers.

His apartment looks like a den for a wounded animal he’s sure. Even the lights are dim, he can always hear the fluorescents buzzing on and off as the power comes and goes. Sometimes he wonders if it’s worth the rent he pays on this place, he only kept it because it was close to her and literally nothing else. He’ll probably lose the deposit he paid down on this shit hole but he doesn’t really care, he doesn’t feel any kind of need to stay here but he doesn’t really have anywhere else to be.

“I made a deal with a Dark God,” he repeats as the song loops around in his head, he forgets the rest of the words but he likes the tune, he doesn’t remember where he first heard it but he likes it. It’s about him, something an old servant of his would sing and he doesn’t remember them, who they were or why he took them on. It could have been plastic pinocchio, it could have been the Fake, it could have been one of his own Shadows though they don’t often speak.

He keeps singing the piece he remembers over and over and doesn’t realise when it’s not just his own voice repeating the words. He lights up another smoke and is singing to himself, not listening to her even though he notices her voice cuts off after a while and he’s just sitting there, half asleep, half dazed. He’s just sitting there, swinging on leg on the outside of the building and singing about a dark deals with dark gods.

“What the fuck?!” her voice is high pitched, shocked and saws across his ears, breaks him out of his haze. He sucks half a breath and chokes on the smoke he didn’t breathe out, he rocks forward and smacks his face on the window pane and blinks blind eyes hard. He looks through the mirrored faces in his apartment and sees himself, crouched over by the window, sees his shitty apartment but he doesn’t see her.

…why would he see her? She’s not here she-

“Get the fuck away!”

 He hears her scrambling away from something and his breathing is evening out and he can hear something more than his own choking, can focus on something more than the burning in his throat. He hears her heartbeat pick up frantic and panicked and hears her hit the wall as she moves away from whatever’s scaring her. He scoffs because he doesn’t hear anything big enough to scare her, not another person so she’s safe, she’s probably getting away from a cockroach or a rat. He can smell the spoiled leftovers of her lunch in her bag and it’s probably a roach, she doesn’t like them.

“O Chin Chin,” he snorts, flicking the cigarette out the window and reaching for the rest of the pack, he’s too keyed up. So what if something happens to her? Even if she gets murdered in her apartment…well so what? Police investigation probably, he could even leave before they got there and make it like he’d never been there in the first place, not that the authority in this realm mattered to him.

“Ore wa,” he jokes, holding up both hands lazily, ‘don’t shoot’. Oh no, getting shot by human police men would be the worst, it might crack his skull open or break his neck, terrible. He snickers as he shakes out another cig and scratches a match, the Devil would love that actually, running from the humans with their pitchforks and torches again.

“Love.”

He drops the cigarette and feels the match scorch his fingers before he drops the match too.

“Love you. Please.”

 He’s ripping out of the human skin without realising it, without thinking, and when he opens his eyes he sees; his Temple, his apartment, his realm, his girl. She’s up against the headboard, staring at him with disgust, fear, confusion.

“Please love,” the Shade’s lips move and Chin Chin can feel them, feel them over his like a second skin, worse than the human face he was wearing. The Shade can’t see much in the dark and Chin Chin can only see because he knows the outline of her body. He’s a floor above her and he can taste the love and lust and hatred spilling out of his Shade, how did it get here? He doesn’t know.

He’s climbing out the window, using more hands than he has in a long while to climb down and his body’s too big but he doesn’t care. His head jerks when she hits the Shade, he thinks she just fucking punched it and he feels the phantom pain along a phantom limb…bone. He didn’t realise the Shade would remember the Devil, didn’t think the Devil left enough of an impression his creature but maybe he didn’t realise enough. The emotions are breaking the Shade apart, bubbling up at the joints and frothing like poison, it can’t keep its shape and

“What the fuck? What the fuck? What the fuck?” she hisses at it, voice a rasp and Chin Chin punches the living room window, he doesn’t care, he breaks into the apartment as literally as he possibly can. He’s too big then he isn’t, he’s smoke and shadow and he’s filling the living room, feeling everything in it.

“Hate. Hate you.”

The words feel bitter on his tongue and they aren’t even his, they aren’t his words and he tried, he tried so hard to get rid of them, he didn’t want them! He breaks the bedroom door because he’s small again, humanoid but not human, he has too many hand and too much teeth and too few eyes.

“What?” she breathes and he knows it’s too dark for her to see him, to understand what he is but it’s not too dark for his teeth to glint even though there’s no light and it’s not too dark for her to see the purple blood on his lips from biting them…when did he?

And the Shade, the Shadow, his creature is here. He feels the hatred bleeding out of it, bleeding and bleeding and it doesn’t stop because it…it held too much. He gave it too much, too much conflict, too much confusion and now it’s writhing on the floor and screeching in a whisper. It loves her, the girl standing at the side of her bed and staring with wide eyes, it loves her like Chin Chin loved-loves her. He still loves her, even after he tried to dump all of the emotion onto this thing, he still loves her even though he hates what she is and what she means.

That’s fucked.

“Ore wa chin chin ga daisuke,” he mumbles, grabbing the Shade with the too many hands, cocking his head at her when she gasps so sharp he can smell the blood in her nose. The Shadow writhes, struggles and fights but it’s not strong, it’s weak, weak, weak. He thinks about all the times he’s killed these servants of his, how he tried to dump his lust for her in one and how it never worked. He thinks about the one the Devil brought for him, the one he ripped apart, then how he fucked the Devil and it still wasn’t enough.

“O Chin Chin!” he shouts at the Shadow, bringing the featureless face close to his and titling the face down with one of his attached hands, making its sightless face look at him. The eyes are somewhere else, the ones he used to look at her, that she knocked out of the Shade’s head when she hit it. And that’s-she hit his Shadow, she touched his mirrors and he loves her, that’s fucked.

“Ore wa,” he tells it and he knows she can’t understand but he doesn’t want her to, he doesn’t want anyone to. The Shade shakes and whines though, it understands because it’s a part of him, it understands that he’s mad it came here, mad it tried to hurt her even though that’s what he’s been doing for the past however long. He’s obsessed with her, manipulated her even though it’s different from what he does to his servants. Still fucked.

“chin chin ga daisuki.” He tears the Shade apart with a flick of his wrists, tears it apart at the joints and the rancid, rotten blood falls heavier than it should. There’s no spray of blood, just the sound of the tendons ripping and cartilage tearing and her heartbeat thudding away underneath it all. There’s no spray of blood because these Shades of his bleed only when he wants them too, there’s no spray of blood because he takes back the body back before it splatters on her.

He loves her and that’s fucked. She’s standing there, staring at him and that’s fucked too but he doesn’t give many fucks anymore. He loves her, okay, she’s human, okay. He just murdered one of his own Shades for trying to touch her, he made a Shade to dump his feelings for her, she’s special to him and he should fucking realise that by now.

“You were never human, were you?” she asks and her voice is raw, the deepest he’s ever heard it, worse than when she was angry, worse than when she was scared because it’s deep in a way that’s emotionless. He shakes his head at her because he doesn’t think he can speak English for her right not, not even for her, he’s shaking in one spot because he wants her right now. He wants to grab her with all of his hands, he wants to press his nose to her throat and breathe her in, feel her pulse against his tongue.

He wants to make her feel good and apologise for what he did and what he is even if the thought disgusts him. He shouldn’t have to apologise for his power but he wants to, for her, he’s fucking in love with her and he hates it, he loves it.

“This is what you look like?” she whispers and he knows she can’t see him, not of him in the dark but she can see enough, she’s always been able to see enough. The Devil was right, his lovely little girl is smart, smarter than he ever wanted to admit to himself and he nods for her now because why not? She’s probably going to run or start screaming and he’ll let her leave because she’s human and…he won’t stop her.

“ ** _Fuck_** you,” she snarls and she’s moving, he can feel her moving, hear her bare feet on the floor, the way her teeth grate together as she sets her jaw. He takes a step away from her, lets her get full view of the door and waits for her to keep going.

“ **Fuck. You** ,” she says very carefully, spitting the words at him but making sure he can understand them. Then she wraps a hand around his throat and squeezes tighter than she did the first time and pulls him in close enough to feel her breath on his lips and he trembles in her grip. He wants her so much, so bad, he wants her to do anything she wants to him. He loves her.

“Fuck, _you_ ,” she whispers, nails digging into the skin through the neck of his suit and she smells like fear and anger and…arousal. She’s hard, and her blood is racing and he wants to touch her, he wants to kiss her. She kisses him first, bites his lower lip until the skin breaks and she licks into his mouth, licks across his too many teeth and cuts her tongue but she doesn’t seem to care. Her fingers are so tight around his neck and her tongue is burning hot in his mouth, hotter than the poison blood that he doesn’t let burn her.

“Fuck me,” she hisses, breaking the kiss to breathe the words, then she slaps him with her free hand and he doesn’t try to stop himself from moaning, doesn’t try to stop himself from trembling and pressing harder into her grip, from stepping into her space and against her body.

Fuck he loves her.


End file.
